Orbital MALT lymphoma, abdominal hodgkin lymphoma, and systemic diffuse large B-cell lymphoma develop sequentially in...

In February 2002, a 42-year-old woman developed ocular adnexal extranodal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma of mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT), MALT lymphoma, in the bilateral orbits involving lacrimal glands. She underwent 30 Gy external beam irradiation to the orbital lesions on both sides. She was well until November 2008 when she developed abdominal lymphadenopathy and transabdominal excisional biopsy showed mixed cellularity classical Hodgkin lymphoma at stage II. She underwent standard combination chemotherapy. In July 2010, she developed systemic lymphadenopathy and was diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) by cervical lymph node biopsy. She underwent rituximab monotherapy and finally allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in October 2010, but died of renal failure in February 2011. Amplification by polymerase chain reaction of the immunoglobulin heavy chain gene gave rise to dominant discrete fragments of the same size between the orbital lesion with MALT lymphoma in 2002 and the cervical lymph node lesion with DLBCL in 2010. The sequential development of MALT lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma, and DLBCL in the long-term course of this patient suggests the common origin of the neoplastic cells, changing their pathological faces in response to irradiation and combination chemotherapy.