U. Axdorph et al., Tissue eosinophilia in relation to immunopathological and clinical characteristics in Hodgkin's disease, LEUK LYMPH, 42(5), 2001, pp. 1055
Eosinophils frequently infiltrate tissues involved by Hodgkin's disease (HD
), and blood eosinophilia is frequently observed. However, the clinical sig
nificance and the mechanisms underlying eosinophilia need further elucidati
on. In this study the grade of eosinophilic infiltration (EoI) was evaluate
d in biopsies from 259 HD-patients. In a selected group (n=32), the numbers
of Hodgkin-Reed-Sternberg (HRS) -cells were counted, and the phenotype of
small lymphocytes, the expression of cytotoxic lymphocyte-associated protei
ns, CD3-zeta -chain, HLA-DR, proliferation markers, latent membrane protein
1 (LMP-1) and blood lymphocyte function were evaluated. Samples from 88 HD
patients (34%) showed high EoI Significantly higher EoI was seen in nodula
r sclerosis 2 (NS2; p <0.001), bulky disease (p <0.05) and in patients < 50
years (p <0.05). Patients with high EoI did not differ from the remainder
with regard to distribution of sex, stage, B-symptoms, blood lymphocyte fun
ction and outcome. HRS-cells were significantly more frequent in NS HID as
compared to mixed cellularity (MC) (p <0.001) irrespective of EoI. LMP-1-ex
pression, proliferative fraction and phenotypes of small lymphocytes did no
t differ between the cases with low and high EoI, respectively. MC HD sampl
es had significantly higher numbers of small cells positive for CD8 (p <0.0
1), T-cell intracellular antigen-1 (p <0.01) and Granzyme B (p <0.05) than
NS. LMP-1-positive cases had significantly higher frequency of CD8-positive
cells than LMP-1-negative. In conclusion, high EoI remains a feature of ce
rtain clinical subgroups of HD.
However, there was no association between the degree of EoI and numbers of
HRS-cells, phenotypes of small lymphocytes, EBV status and clinical outcome
. Determination of EoI is of limited diagnostic and prognostic clinical val
ue in HD. However, the differences in small cell distribution of CD8, TIA-1
, GrB and CD57 between the histopathological groups and between LMP-1-expre
ssing/non-expressing cases may contribute to our understanding of the biolo
gy of the disease.