Nonsecretory variant of immunoproliferative small intestinal disease: a case report with pathologic, immunophenotypic, and molecular findings.

ABSTRACT

We report a case of the nonsecretory variant of immunoproliferative small intestinal disease involving the distal small bowel and the mesenteric and retroperitoneal lymph nodes in a 19-year-old woman from Mexico. This variant extranodal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma appeared similar in the different sites of involvement, with more interspersed large cells and greater plasmacytic differentiation present in intestinal specimens. Characteristic lymphoepithelial lesions and follicular colonization were seen in intestinal and lymph node sections, respectively. The neoplastic B cells were cytoplasmic immunoglobulin (Ig) A heavy-chain restricted and lacked surface and cytoplasmic light-chain expression by flow cytometric analysis. Serum and urine protein electrophoresis/immunofixation revealed hypogammaglobulinemia with no paraprotein. Molecular studies showed absence of immunoglobulin heavy-chain (IgH) gene rearrangement, with a nonfunctional clonotypic rearrangement of the kappa light-chain gene. This case highlights the role for kappa light-chain gene evaluation in immunoproliferative small intestinal disease, because IgH gene rearrangement analysis is often negative.