This Article Order Full text via Infotrieve Services Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Arai, E. Articles by Katayama, I. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Arai, E. Articles by Katayama, I.

American Journal of Pathology, Vol 144, 15-20, Copyright © 1994 by American Society for Investigative Pathology

REGULAR ARTICLES

Differentiation between cutaneous form of adult T cell leukemia/lymphoma and cutaneous T cell lymphoma by in situ hybridization using a human T cell leukemia virus-1 DNA probe

E Arai, KC Chow, CY Li, M Tokunaga and I Katayama
Department of Pathology, Saitama Medical School, Japan.

Adult T cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL) shares overlapping clinicopathological features with cutaneous T cell lymphoma (CTCL), requiring detection of monoclonal integration of proviral DNA of type 1 human T cell leukemia virus for its differential diagnosis from the latter. We applied in situ hybridization (ISH) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to paraffin sections from 63 Japanese autopsy cases that had been diagnosed as CTCL in earlier years when ATLL was still not widely known. Eleven and two cases with confirmed diagnoses of ATLL and CTCL served as positive and negative controls, respectively. It was found that ISH was positive in 7 of 63 test cases and 10 of 11 positive controls, whereas PCR was positive in none of the test cases and eight of the positive control cases. Two negative controls were negative for both ISH and PCR. We conclude that ISH is superior to PCR for detecting type 1 human T cell leukemia virus proviral DNA on paraffin sections and that the ISH method is useful for differentiating CTCL from the cutaneous form of ATLL.