Laboratory findings and clinical courses of 33 patients with granular lymphocyte-proliferative disorders

The hematological and immunological findings and clinical courses of 33 patients (13 male, 20 female; median age at presentation, 60 years) with granular lymphocyte-proliferative disorders (GLPD) are presented. Based on the surface phenotypes of peripheral blood granular lymphocytes (GL), the GLPD were divided into CD3+ T cell-lineage GLPD (T-GLPD) and CD3- CD16+ natural killer (NK) cell-lineage GLPD (NK-GLPD). Twenty-one patients had T-GLPD, and 12 had NK-GLPD. One patient with T-GLPD and two patients with NK-GLPD had progressive clinical courses and died of the disease despite receiving combination chemotherapy. Twelve patients with T-GLPD were found to have severe anemia at presentation or during the course of the disease; four of them fulfilled the diagnostic criteria of pure red cell aplasia, and the others had closely related conditions. Six of these 12 patients were treated with cyclophosphamide, and all responded to the treatment. In 16 patients, the clinical course was stable, and spontaneous regression was observed in two patients. Since some of the patients with NK-GLPD had stable clinical courses while some had progressive clinical courses, clinical findings in these two groups were compared. We found, taking into consideration our cases and those reviewed in the literature, that age less than 40 years, fever, lymph node swelling, hepatosplenomegaly, and GL with CD16(Leu-11)-CD56+CD57- phenotype and low or absent antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity seemed to be predictors of a progressive clinical course.