“Adult T-cell Leukemia”

—A Comment on the Definition from the Clinical View Point—

Abstract

The surface makers and functions of human lymphocytes have been widely studied in various immunological diseases. Along with the progress in these investigations, a better classification of lymphoproliferative disoders has been also attempted.
Lutzner et al. suggested that the Sézary syndrome, mycosis fungoides, and related disoders were grouped together as “Cutaneous T-cell Lymphoma”.
Takatsuki et al. recently proposed the concept of “Adult T-cell Leukemia” based on their observations on patients natives of south Kyushu in Japan. They thought that “Adult T-cell Leukemia” was different from the classical Sézary syndrome.
We observed 16 similar cases including 4 probable cases, which were identical to, resemble with, or distinct from the Sézary syndrome. But it was very difficult to separate them from each other by a definite line. We thought that all these cases were essentially identical to Sézary syndrome.
It is suggested that Sézary syndrome, mycosis fungoides, adult T-cell leukemia and T-CLL or some of T-lymphomas with abnormal cells containing bizarre nucleus are the same disease.