Hodgkin's lymphoma - New perspectives for well-known disease.

Hodgin's disease combines in a unique fashion characteristics of an inflammatory process with those of a true neoplasia. Epidemiological features of the disease, clinical characteristics and the demonstration of activated T-lymphocytes representing the predominant population in affected lymphatic tissue point to a pronounced but insufficient T-cell-response against a yet undefined (viral) target antigen expressed on Hodgkin/Reed-Sternberg (H-RS) cells. Micromanipulation of single H-RS cells from a primary tissue followed by encymatic amplification of their DNA represents a methodological breakthrough for the genetic analysis of this disease. First results obtained with this method have provided evidence that Hodgkin's disease, at least in the majority of cases analyzed, represents a monoclonal B-cell disorder