Hodgkin disease associated with T-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas: case reports and review of the literature

Abstract

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) is more likely to develop in patients with Hodgkin disease (HD) than in the general population. Although reports of synchronous or metachronous HD and NHL are not uncommon in the literature, the biologic relationship of these 2 malignant neoplasms often is unclear. A larger-than-expected fraction of NHLs occurring in patients with HD are of the T-cell phenotype. We report 1 synchronous and 3 metachronous cases of HD and T-cell NHL. In 2 cases, the 2 tumors are unlikely to be related clonally. In the other 2 cases, however, T-cell receptor rearrangement studies demonstrated the presence of the same rearranged clone in both tumor specimens, suggesting that they share a common precursor or that one arose by transformation of the other. These observations imply that, similar to the observations in B-cell NHLs occurring with HD, a subset of synchronous and metachronous T-cell NHLs and HD may be related clonally.