Peripheral T Cell Lymphoma in Adults: Morphological and Phenotypical Study of Four Cases

Abstract

In the present study we investigated the lymph node morphology and distribution of cell surface phenotypes in four cases of adult peripheral T cell lymphoma. Histologically, the tumors were classified as T zone lymphoma, T cell lymphoma with large multilobated nuclei and T cell immunoblastic sarcoma. In the T zone lymphoma the neoplastic lymphocytes were E⁺ (90 %) and exhibited intensive focal staining for acid phosphatase (93 %) and acid esterase (92 %); the phenotype distribution revealed low expression of the T-3 antigen (49 %), selective expression of the T-4 antigen (72 %) and poor expression of T-6 (10 %) and T-10 antigens (22 %). Some of these features are present in normal and in neoplastic immature T cells. In the remaining three cases the majority of lymph node cells were E⁺ (59–75 %), T-3⁺ (67–80 %) and T-8⁺ (43–55 %). A distinctive feature of the T cell immunoblastic sarcoma was the presence of high percentages of DR⁺ cells (62 %; 63 %). Thus our results indicate that the morphological heterogeneity of peripheral T cell lymphoma is also paralleled by a variety of surface phenotypes and that phenotype studies may provide a useful contribution to identification and accurate classification of peripheral T cell neoplasms.