[Autoimmune hemolytic anemia and immune thrombocytopenia associated with Hodgkin disease: Retrospective monocentric...

Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) is less common than non-Hodgkin lymphoma and is rarely associated with autoimmune cytopenia.

We report a consecutive, monocentric and retrospective series of HL patients diagnosed with concomitant or subsequent autoimmune cytopenia over a period of 8 years.

We report 4 out of 84 HL patients (4.8%) diagnosed with autoimmune cytopenia (4 immune thrombocytopenia including 2 Evans' syndromes). They were 4 males (average age 24 years for the 3 youngest, and one over 60 years old). Autoimmune cytopenia revealed lymphoma in 2 patients and occurred after HL treatment in the two other patients (5 and 36 months from the end of chemotherapy) without HL relapse. All cytopenias were resistant to conventional treatments (glucocorticoids, intravenous immune globulin, rituximab) and sensitive to chemotherapy when indicated for HL treatment.

In our series, the predominance of males, a higher frequency of immune thrombocytopenia than autoimmune hemolytic anemia, the resistance to usual treatments and the efficacy of specific chemotherapy were consistent with the literature. Unexpectedly, patients were young and with nodular sclerosis morphology (vs. mixed cellularity) in 3 of 4 cases.