We have analyzed chromosome abnormalities in 32 B-cell lymphoma (B-ML), 29 T-cell lymphoma (T-ML) and 29 adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATL) patients and tested the reactivity of Bloom syndrome (BS) derived malignant lymphoma (ML) antigen with the sera in these patients with immunofluorescence (IF) and Western blotting (WB) protocols. Among the cases analyzed, 14q32 abnormalities were observed in 11 (B-ML), 8 (T-ML) and 10 (ATL) cases; these changes were accompanied by complex numerical and structural abnormalities. In the IF and WB analyses, the reactivity of BS ML antigen and ML sera showed high positivity in over 85% of ML cases and appeared to clearly raise the number of successful diagnoses as compared to the chromosome finding, giving 50-60% success in identifying ML. WB analyses demonstrated common ML antigen band at 97 KD (B-ML, T-ML and ATL). DNA analysis from BS ML antigen cells (BS-SHI-4M ML) showed rearranged fragments in both T-cell receptor (TCR alpha3 and immunoglobulin joining region (I(g)J(H) genes. The present findings of rearrangements of TCR alpha3 and I(g)J(H) in BS-SHI-4M ML antigen cells possibly support the common reactivity of BS ML antigen to B- and T-ML and ATL sera. The possible role of immunoglobulin heavy chain variable region (I(g)V(H) gene mutation and ML antigen expression is discussed.

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