COMMENTARY

Coeliac disease

Gastrointestinal intraepithelial lymphocytes and T cell lymphomas

I N Farstad¹, K E A Lundin²

¹ Institute of Pathology, University of Oslo, Rikshospitalet, Oslo, Norway
² Department of Medicine, University of Oslo, Rikshospitalet, Oslo, Norway

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr I N Farstad, Institute of Pathology, Rikshospitalet, N-0027 Oslo, Norway;
i.n.farstad@labmed.uio.no

---

Enteropathy-type intestinal T cell lymphoma is assumed to derive from intraepithelial lymphocytes and recent reports describing an intermediate or "cryptic" stage of this lymphoma in patients with many characteristics of coeliac disease have challenged aspects of our understanding of coeliac disease and lymphoma development

---

Keywords: enteropathy-type intestinal T cell lymphoma; lymphocytic gastritis; lymphocytic colitis; coeliac disease; refractory sprue; T cell receptor gene rearrangement

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Gastrointestinal T cell lymphomas occur less often than those of B cells but have a much more unfavourable prognosis.¹ Enteropathy-associated T cell lymphoma (EATL) is the predominant subtype,¹ "enteropathy" indicating a link to coeliac disease (CD).¹ More recently, enteropathy-type intestinal T cell lymphoma (EITCL) seems to be the preferred term for this entity.^2,3 EITCL is assumed to derive from intraepithelial lymphocytes (IELs) and recent reports describing an intermediate or "cryptic" stage of this lymphoma in patients with many characteristics of CD have provided a "missing link" in our understanding of the pathogenesis of EITCL.^4,5

Refractory coeliac sprue (RCS) is diagnosed in patients with CD-like enteropathy who do not respond to a gluten free diet, primarily or some time after an initial response.⁶ RCS patients with phenotypically normal and polyclonal IELs may respond to immunosuppressive therapy.⁵ However, a large fraction of RCS patients have heavily increased IEL numbers lacking . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Refractory coeliac sprue is a diffuse gastrointestinal disease

V Verkarre, V Asnafi, T Lecomte, N Patey Mariaud-De Serre, M Leborgne, E Grosdidier, C Le Bihan, E Macintyre, C Cellier, N Cerf-Bensussan, and N Brousse
Gut 2003 52: 205-211. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]