[A progress in the diagnosis of malignant lymphoma]

Malignant lymphoma is usually divided into Hodgkin's disease (HD) and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) according to the biological characteristics. Although the exact nature of HD is still unclear, NHL is well known to be a neoplasm of monoclonal and malignant B- or T-lymphocytes. Nowadays, the classification of pathologic type in HD seems to be settled in the Rye classification. On the other hand, in NHL the LSG classification has been fixed routinely in Japan and the Working Formulation originating in the USA has been used internationally after some historical confusion. As a recent trend in lymphoma diagnosis, the introduction of immunological and molecular biological techniques has had an impact on the previous concept and classification of malignant lymphoma based mainly on morphological criteria. In this article, recent progress in the diagnosis of malignant lymphoma, mainly NHL, including the analysis of immunophenotype and immunogenotype (intragenic and intergenic gene rearrangement) is briefly described.