Intra-abdominal localized hyaline-vascular Castleman disease: imaging characteristics and management of a rare condition.

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Castleman disease (CD) is a rare lymphoproliferative disorder of unknown etiology and one of the uncommon causes of nonneoplastic lymphadenopathy. Earlier synonyms of CD included angiofollicular lymph node hyperplasia, giant lymph node hyperplasia, lymphoid hamartoma, benign lymphoma and follicular lymphoreticuloma. This disease was first reported by Castleman et al. in 1954 [1] and later defined by Castleman et al. in 1956 in a series of 13 patients with unicentric hyaline vascular CD presenting with large thymoma-like masses in the anterior mediastinum [2]. The condition was later found to be occasionally associated with hypochromic anemia, hypergammaglobulinemia and bone marrow plasmacytosis [3, 4]. By the late 1960s and the early 1970s, the histological features of the different forms of the disease and the classification in current use had been established [5, 6]. The disease features three main histopathological presentations: hyaline vascular, plasma cell-rich, and mixed variants [6, 7]. The exact incidence of CD is unknown. Association of certain forms of the disease with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and human herpes virus-8 (HHV-8) infections has been long recognized. In 1985, Lachant et al. reported on 2 patients with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) who developed multicentric CD followed by Kaposi sarcoma [8]. In 1995, Soulier et al. reported frequent coincidence of HHV-8 in 31 patients with multicentric CD [9].