We here describe 13 patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) and a translocation t(11:14)(q13:q32). They were part of a series of 163 patients with NHL and an abnormal karyotype, serially referred to our institution between January 1984 and 1990. Patients with t(11:14) seem to present several common and interesting features. Males are more frequently affected than females, and old people more than young. They present at diagnosis with advanced disease and usually show involvement of epithelium and bone marrow. With respect to histologic diagnoses, these patients are usually considered to be of low-grade malignancies. However, most of them do very poorly, have short complete remission and frequent relapses whatever the treatment. As a whole, the median survival rate is rather low. The cytologic, histologic as well as the immunologic patterns tend to be uniform: tumours are composed of small cells and display features of mantle zone/intermediate lymphocytic lymphoma. They express high IgM and low IgD levels and more commonly bear Ig lambda light chains. They also express all pan-B antigens (except CD23) as well as the CD5 antigen, but usually lack the CD10. According to these characteristics, these tumours could be placed in between lymphocytic lymphomas (which usually express CD23) and follicular lymphomas (which commonly lack IgD and CD5 and bear CD10 as well as a t(14:18).

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We describe a patient with stage IV non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) and a t(11;18)(q21;q21) translocation. He presented with a gastric small B-cell lymphocytic lymphoma, expressing IgAL immunoglobulins without expression of CD10, CD5, and CD23 antigens. The lymphoma was the final development of a 6-year history of a monoclonal IgAL increase complicated by severe renal failure due to membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis. The clinical, histological, immunologic, and cytogenetic features of this patient are very similar to those observed in the five other patients with t(11;18) reported to date. This translocation therefore seems to delineate a new subtype of diffuse small B-cell lymphoma with involvement of mucosal sites. Involvement of the BCL2 oncogene on 18q21 could not be detected using molecular techniques with 5' as well as 3' BCL2 probes, indicating that other, so far unknown, genes relevant to lymphoid differentiation could be located in 18q21 and 11q21.

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