Freena Rose1, Rajan Gopalan Nair2
BACKGROUND
Kikuchi-Fujimoto disease has become a common cause of lymphadenopathy in many parts of the world. The cause and pathogenesis still remains a mystery. Systemic morphological studies of the disease are few from India.
Aims of this study were-
1. To delineate the clinical and lab features as well as lymph node morphology of Kikuchi-Fujimoto disease and to compare the above features with previous studies.
2. To compare the proliferative subtype of the disease with high-grade lymphoma and devise a scoring system that aids in differential diagnosis.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
35 consecutive patients diagnosed to have Kikuchi-Fujimoto Disease on lymph node biopsy in Calicut Medical College during the period January 2006 to December 2007 were evaluated for their clinical details. Their lymph node biopsies were reassessed; 15 lymph node biopsies reported as high-grade non-Hodgkin lymphoma were compared with proliferative subtype of Kikuchi Fujimoto Disease.
RESULTS
The mean age in the study was 25.4 years with female: male ratio of 2.5. Cervical nodes were involved in almost all the cases. Significant number of cases were associated with leukopaenia. Of the 35 cases 17 were proliferative type (48.6%), 16 were necrotising type (45.7%) and 2 were xanthomatous type (5.7%). A scoring system was devised for discriminating between KFD and high-grade lymphoma noting certain microscopic features.
CONCLUSION
Kikuchi-Fujimoto disease is a benign self-limiting condition, which commonly affects cervical lymph nodes of young women. Histologically, the node can be subtyped into 3 categories. A scoring system devised can be used to discriminate between proliferative subtype of Kikuchi-Fujimoto disease and high-grade lymphoma.
