Trisomy 3 in cold agglutinin disease

Cold agglutinin disease (CAD) is a form of autoimmune hemolytic anemia generally considered to result from an antibody-producing clonal expansion of B lymphocytes. We studied 16 patients with CAD and demonstrated a chromosomally abnormal clone in the peripheral blood (PB) of six. Trisomy 3 was the only abnormality in two patients, trisomy 12 the only abnormality in one, and both trisomy 3 and trisomy 12 were present in three patients. A lymphoma was subsequently diagnosed in two of these six patients and in none of the patients without a karyotypic abnormality. The results suggest that trisomy 3 confers a slight growth advantage in the B-cell lineage, particularly at a relatively late stage of differentiation. The resultant clone may present clinically as CAD and, in some cases, progress to a clinical lymphoma.