CD20 Expression in Hodgkin and Reed-Sternberg Cells of Classical Hodgkin's Disease: Associations With Presenting Features and Clinical Outcome

Abstract

PURPOSE: CD20 can be expressed in Hodgkin and Reed-Sternberg (HRS) cells of classical Hodgkin’s disease (HD), but its clinical significance remains controversial. Therefore, we correlated CD20 expression with presenting features and clinical outcome of untreated patients with classical HD. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Patients were eligible if they were previously untreated and human immunodeficiency virus-1 negative, had biopsy-proven classical HD, and if pretreatment paraffin-embedded tumor tissue was available. CD20 expression was determined by immunohistochemistry without knowledge of clinical outcome. A tumor was considered positive if any HRS cells expressed CD20, but other cutoffs for number of CD20-positive HRS were also investigated. RESULTS: We identified 598 patients whose median age was 30 years and of whom 55% were male. HRS cells expressed CD20 in 132 (22%) of 598 patients with classical HD. When any percentage of CD20 expression in HRS cells was used as a cutoff, the 5-year failure-free survival (...