Abstract

Richer's syndrome is a development of a high grade malignant lymphoma in a patient with preexisting chronic 1ymphocytic leukemia, small lymphocytic lymphoma or Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia. A rare case of Richer's syndrome arising in the spleen of a 35-year-old-man was studied by morphology, immunohistochemistry and gene rearrangement study. He has had weight loss and night sweat for last 6 months. Hepatosplenomegaly and abdominal lymphadenopathy were noted on CT scanning. Especially an ovoid radiolucent mass was found within the image of splenomegaly. Lymph nodes and liver biopsy, bone marrow aspiration and splenectomy were done. In the lymph nodes, liver and bone marrow, well differentiated small lymphocytic infiltrations were found but, in the spleen, pleomorphic, large cells with occasional multinucleated giant cells formed a nodular mass surrounded by diffuse, extensive infiltration of small well differentiated lymphocytes. The two distinctive areas in the spleen had positive staining for B-cell marker (HLA-DR and L26), negative staining for T-cell marker (UCLH1), and positive staining for IgM heavy chain and kappa light chain by immuohistochemical study. so this case was diagnosed as a diffuse large cell 1ymphoma transformed from small lymphocytic lymphoma. We made an another effort to clarify their clonality. Gene rearrangement method usingcomplementarity.determining region 3(CDR3) of immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) gene and T-cell receptor gamma (TCRgamma) gene by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique was done. The two lymphomas in the spleen demonstrated the same rearrangement pattern in both IgH and TCRgamma gene. We think these findings strongly suggest that the large cell lymphoma has the same clonality with that of the small lymphocytic lymphoma.

• Keywords: Richer's syndrome;Spleen;Malignant lymphoma