Abstract: Intense hemophagocytosis by bone marrow histiocytes was observed in a 66-year-old man who had fever, jaundice, hepatosplenomegaly, and pancytopenia. This constellation of findings was originally described by Scott and Robb-Smith<sup>1</sup>in 1939 and was termed<i>histiocytic medullary reticulosis</i>because of the characteristic infiltration of the medullary region of the lymph nodes by histiocytes. Rappaport<sup>2</sup>renamed the disease<i>malignant histiocytosis</i>in 1966 and emphasized the presence of cytologic atypia of the hemophagocytic histiocytes as a criterion for diagnosis. Malignant histiocytosis is now recognized as one of the rare malignancies of true monocytemacrophage origin and is generally regarded as having a poor prognosis, although some encouraging reports of improved survival following combination chemotherapy have been published in recent years.<sup>3</sup> Hemophagocytosis has also been observed accompanying reactive histiocytic proliferation in response to systemic bacterial infections, including miliary tuberculosis, brucellosis, and typhoid.<sup>4</sup>Recently, prominent hemophagocytosis was described in association with
Publication Year: 1984
Publication Date: 1984-09-14
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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