A rare face of follicular lymphoma: reverse variant of follicular lymphoma

Abstract

Background: Reverse Variant of Follicular Lymphoma (RVFL) is one of the rare morphological variants of FL, characterized by dark staining small centrocytes in the center and pale staining large centroblasts at the periphery of the neoplastic follicles. Only rare cases of RVFL have been described to date. The histological appearance of this little known variant of FL may be misinterpreted if pathologists are unaware of its existence. The main purpose of this study is to draw pathologists' attention to such an uncommon growth pattern of FL so that this variant can be correctly recognized and the clinical significance further studied in the future. Methods: Four cases of FL with unusual morphologic features were evaluated for the expression pattern of CD20,

Tumor Microenvironment and Microvascular Density in Follicular Lymphoma

“…In this work, we quantified by immunohistochemistry the inflammatory cell content and the microvessel density in tissue samples derived from the lymph nodes of FL patients at grades 1, 2, and 3A as compared with normal lymph nodes with the aim to establish a correlation with tumor progression. We selected patients with follicular growth patterns excluding the diffuse forms of FL in which the amount of interfollicular tissue is extremely variable and often absent, causing the back-to-back arrangement of follicles [ 44 ]. For this reason, we focused our analysis on the description of the characteristics of the follicular tumor tissue.…”