Hodgkin's disease in childhood: histopathologic classification in relation to age and sex

The histopathologic classification of Hodgkin's disease is discussed in relation to age and sex of 278 children younger than 15 years of age, whose lymph node biopsies were diagnosed between 1963 and 1978 at the Lymph Node Registry in Kiel. The distribution of the histologic subtypes was not essentially different from that in adult cases, with the exception of a lower incidence of the lymphocyte depletion type in children. The youngest patient was 22 months old. We found a gradual increase in the number of cases per year until the age of 15 years. We also confirmed the male preponderance in Hodgkin's disease, which was especially pronounced in the younger age group. The male preponderance was most apparent in the lymphocyte predominance and mixed cellularity types and less evident in the nodular sclerosis and lymphocyte depletion types. The only changes in subtype in sequential biopsies from a total of 34 cases were seen in 3 out of 13 cases of the mixed cellularity type: later biopsies from the 3 cases showed a change to nodular sclerosis.