Hairy cell leukemia is a rare lymphoid neoplasm arising from mature B-lymphocytes. Clinically, the disease presents with splenomegaly and abdominal discomfort, frequent infections, fatigue and bleeding because of related cytopenias. Bone marrow biopsy is essential for diagnosis. Below we describe a case of a 70-year-old African-American male who presented to our hematology clinic complaining of...

A patient with hairy cell leukemia developed purpura not attributable to thrombocytopenia. We found markedly reduced platelet aggregation responses and malondialdehyde production, decreased serotonin uptake, and depleted dense granule contents. Ultrastructural studies showed that most platelets had few or nor granules. All of the clinical and laboratory studies of platelet function and morpholo...

We describe two patients with a new clinical pathologic syndrome of diffuse osteosclerosis in association with hairy cell leukemia. In both patients bone marrow biopsies could not be obtained due to extremely hard bones and inability to insert the biopsy needle; neither patient had a history of bony pain or fracture. The osteosclerotic process in one patient stabilized after successful treatmen...

Surface IgG expression of 29 cases of hairy cell leukemia (HCL) was assessed using IgG-subclass-specific monoclonal and F(ab)'2 polyclonal antibodies. A marked preference for the IgG3 subclass was found, as 16 of 19 IgG-positive HCL's expressed IgG3. In 10 cases, IgG3 was concurrently expressed with other heavy chains. No preferential IgG3 expression was observed in 11 IgG-positive non-Hodgkin'...

AIRY CELL LEUKEMIA (HCL), or leukemic reticuH loendotheliosis, is a chronic lymphoproliferative disease that was first described as a distinct clinicopathologic entity by Bouroncle et a1 in 1958.' It is characterized by mononuclear cells of B-lymphocyte origin in the peripheral blood that have prominent cytoplasmic projections staining with tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase' and by its typica...

In order to determine the nature of infectious complications in hairy-cell leukemia we studied 20 consecutive patients seen at UCLA and analyzed the available literature. The incidence of serious infection in our series was 40%, and pneumonia and septicemia due to Pseudomonas and E. coli organisms were the leading types of infections. Fungal infections with Cryptococci and Histoplasma organisms...