Relationship between cytogenetic findings and histopathology in non-Hodgkin lymphoma

The cytogenetic findings in 70 patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma have been correlated with tumor histopathology according to the Kiel classification. Certain chromosome aberrations displayed a nonrandom association with the grade of malignancy: 4 lymphomas out of 6 with 1p+, 5 out of 7 with del(6)(q15), 7 out of 11 with 14q+, and 5 out of 8 with +18 belonged to the high grade malignancy group, whereas 9 lymphomas out of 10 with t(14;18) were low grade malignant. Two aberration types were closely associated with specific histopathologic subtypes: t(14;18) occurred in 7 cases out of 10 in centroblastic/centrocytic (cb/cc) follicular lymphomas, and 5 cases out of 6 with i(17q) were cb or cb/cc. Although less striking, there was a tendency for del(6)(q15) to occur in cb or cb/cc lymphomas (4 cases out of 7), in contrast to only 1 case out of 5 with the more distal deletion del(6)(q21).