[Liver cirrhosis and lymphoproliferative diseases: coincidence or association?]

The development of lymphoproliferative disorders in association with a chronic liver disease, although uncommon has been documented in several reports and a review of the available literature yielded a total of 34 cases. It has been suggested that this association is probably not a fortuitous coincidence and several mechanisms explaining the development of lymphoproliferative diseases in the course of liver disease have been offered. We have evaluated the annual cumulative incidence of such an association in the specific population of patients with liver cirrhosis (N.:344) admitted to our Department of Gastroenterology, Mauriziano Hospital, in Turin, within 3.5 years, from January 1987 to June 1990: it resulted to be 9.56/1,000 subjects per year. This figure is much higher than the annual incidence registered in Turin within the years 1985-87 for the same lymphoproliferative disease, 39.6/100,000 inhabitants. Our data add value to the hypothesis that this association is not incidental and suggest that chronic liver disease should be added to the list of the pathological conditions with immunological disturbances associated with lymphoproliferative disorders.