Granulomas in bone marrow biopsies: clinicopathological significance and new perspectives

Abstract

Bone marrow granulomas in trephine biopsies are a rare and usually incidental finding. Possible causes include infectious (especially tuberculous and rarer non-tuberculous mycobacteria, but also many other bacterial, viral, fungal and parasitic agents) and non-infectious causes (especially medications, autoimmune disease, sarcoidosis, haematological and non-haematological malignancy). Necrotising granulomas are generally suggestive of an infectious aetiology (tuberculosis being the most common), whereas fibrin ring granulomas are associated with Q-fever and Epstein Barr Virus, although exceptions are possible. Every case suspicious for infectious aetiology should undergo further analysis like special staining (Ziehl-Neelsen for acid-fast rods) or molecular studies. The histomorphology should always be clinically correlated. In cases in which no infectious cause can be identified, untargeted metagenomics may represent a valid diagnostic tool that may become standard in the near future for bone marrow diagnostics. In this review, we have analysed the published data from 1956 up to today, and we report aspects of epidemiology, aetiology, diagnostic algorithms, differential diagnosis and the role of metagenomics in bone marrow biopsies with granulomas.