[The relationship of centrocytoma and centroblastoma in malignant lymphoma]

In a complex of 33 multiparametrally verified lymphomas of centrocytic and centroblastic types, the interrelationship of the tumor cells was studied. The ratio between the centrocytes and the centroblasts was independent in many aspects being mostly topical. The centrocytoma regularly showed a tendency to produce a folicular type of organization which manifested a definite polarity even in the cytologically pure variants. The polarity of the follicular structures, however, was given by the transition of the small cohesive centrocytes into the large centrocytes lacking cohesion. The polar follicular organization is probably generally contiguous to the transition of the small centrocytes into the large ones. The extrafollicular regions of the follicular centrocytoma are usually formed by second generation lymphocytes with a cleaved nucleus, the leukemization of which is usually the expression of an "atypical CLL". The centroblastoma never manifested, not even in its nodular variants, any truly follicular configuration. The relation between the centroblasts and the centrocytes was less constant than that concerning the immunoblasts and the lymphoplasmoid cells, which, in the case of leukemization, were close to the typical CLL (composed of cells having round nuclei). The centroblast, as a whole, appears to be an element more or less just "cooperating" with the centrocyte, while being independent otherwise, without any direct or obligatory participation in the succession during the blastic transformation of the B lymphocytes.