Malignant lymphoma, mixed cell type, diffuse

This retrospective study of diffuse mixed (DM) cell lymphoma was undertaken as a collaborative study between the Repository Center for Lymphoma Clinical Studies and four cooperative oncology groups (CALGB, ECOG, SECSG, SWOG), and was based on 62 patients from the files of the Repository Center. We wanted to ascertain whether there were any significant clinical differences among the various morphological subtypes of this lymphoma. All patients were treated according to different protocols of the Cooperative Oncology Groups sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. In 16 patients (26%), the malignant lymphoma (ML) had morphological features consistent with follicular center cell origin (FCC); in 34 patients (55%), the ML did not have features of follicular center cell type (non-FCC), but had morphology described for peripheral T-cell-derived ML. In 8 of the patients (13%), no agreement could be reached by the 7 histopathologists who participated in the study, and these were classified as unresolved; the remaining 4 (6%) were unclassifiable. We compared the survival times of the 16 patients having the morphological features of the FCC subtype with the survival times of the 34 patients with the non-FCC subtype and found that patients with FCC lived longer (p = 0.07 Cox's regression). In the FCC group, all patients who had complete remissions (CR) were alive; however, their survival times were similar to those who had a partial or no response (p = 0.32). In contrast, in the non-FCC group, the median survival was 20 mo, and patients with a CR had a significantly longer survival than did incomplete responders (p = 0.003). According to these results the non-FCC diffuse mixed cell lymphoma appears to be a high-grade malignant lymphoma, whereas the FCC type is not.