Introduction: Anaplastic large cell lymphoma belongs to a relatively good prognostic group of high grade non-Hodgkin lymphomas. Molecular genetic methods can provide great help in the differential diagnosis of the disease.
Aims: Sixteen frozen lymph node samples of CD30 positive lymphomas with anaplastic morphology and 1 bone marrow aspiration were analysed with polymerase chain reaction according to T-cell receptor gene and immunglobulin heavy chain gene rearrangement. T(2;5)(p23;q35), t(1;2)(q25;p23) chromosomal translocation was also investigated with reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction.
Results: Seven cases showed null-, 3 T-, 4 B- and 2 T/B hibrid genotype. Two cases of t(2;5), whereas no t(1;2) translocation was demonstrated.
Conclusions: Molecular genetic results correlated with the results of immunhistochemistry and can give further help to divide the cases into smaller, new prognostic subgroups.