The Relationship Between Eosinophil and Hodgkin Cell Densities in Lymph Nodes of Children With Different Subtypes of Classical Hodgkin'S Disease

Although eosinophils are frequently found in lymphatic tissues of patients with classic hodgkirf s disease (hd), no substantial data reveals the relationship between tissue cellular densities of eosinophils and hodgkin-reed-sternberg cells in involved lymph nodes. in this study, we determined the respective cellular densities of these cells on lymph node tissue sections of 80 pediatric patients with different subtypes of classical hd from 1992 to 2002. the mixed cellularity (mc) and lymphocyte-rich (lr) subtypes displayed the maximal (67.50%) and minimal (2.50%) percentages of total number of cases. also the nodular sclerosis (ns) and lymphocyte depletion (ld) subtypes composed 26.25% and 3.75% of the cases, respectively. lr and ld subtypes were omitted from correlation studies, owing to their respective suboptimal number of cases and unreliability of statistical results. eosinophil and hodgkin cell densities were determined by cell counting on histological slides of two other subtypes (75 patients), separately. the ns subtype revealed a strong positive correlation (r = +0.9) and nearly a linear relationship between two density values. also, a poor correlation (r = -0.3) was detected between two densities in mc subtype. considering different signal transduction pathways in subtypes of classical hd, it was postulated that the proposed correlation of tissue eosinophilia with poor prognosis in ns is probably related to their role in protection of tumoral hodgkin cells from apoptosis and subsequent increase of their tissue concentration, a process that is not observed in mc subtype with some other complicating molecular factors