Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Oct 26, 2019; 7(20): 3377-3383
Published online Oct 26, 2019. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v7.i20.3377
Anaplastic lymphoma kinase-negative anaplastic large cell lymphoma masquerading as Behcet's disease: A case report and review of literature
Juan Luo, Ying-Han Jiang, Zi Lei, Ying-Lei Miao
Juan Luo, Ying-Lei Miao, Department of Gastroenterology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Institute of Digestive Disease, Kunming 650000, Yunnan Province, China
Ying-Han Jiang, Department of Pathology, the First People’s Hospital of Yunnan Province, Kunming 650000, Yunnan Province, China
Zi Lei, Department of Pathology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming 650000, Yunnan Province, China
Author contributions: Luo J, Jiang YH, Lei Z, and Miao YL contributed equally to this work; Luo J and Miao ML designed research; Jiang YH and Lei Z performed research; Luo J and Miao YL wrote the paper.
Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. U1802282, No. 81660100, and No. 81670501; MDT Innovation Team to Digestive Diseases of S&T Department of Yunnan Province, No. 2017HC005; Digestive Diseases S&T Innovation Team of Kunming Medical University, No. CXTD201611.
Informed consent statement: Informed consent to publish was obtained from the patient.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
CARE Checklist (2016) statement: The authors have read the CARE Checklist (2016), and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CARE Checklist (2016).
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ying-Lei Miao, PhD, Doctor, Department of Gastroenterology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, No. 295 Xichang Road, Kunming 650000, Yunnan Province, China. miaoyinglei@yeah.net
Telephone: +86-13708498467 Fax: +86-871-65324888
Received: June 28, 2019
Peer-review started: June 29, 2019
First decision: July 31, 2019
Revised: August 24, 2019
Accepted: September 11, 2019
Article in press: September 11, 2019
Published online: October 26, 2019
Abstract
BACKGROUND

Anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) is a CD30-positive T cell lymphoma, a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The current World Health Organization classification system divides ALCLs into anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive and ALK-negative groups. ALCL rarely presents in the gastrointestinal tract.

CASE SUMMARY

A 54-year-old male was admitted to the department of gastroenterology for abdominal pain. He presented with lower abdominal pain, diarrhea and recurrent oral and penile ulcers. He was misdiagnosed with Behcet's disease and treated with prednisone. But after one month, he was hospitalized in another hospital for reexamination. This time, the lesion on the penis was biopsied for histological examination. The final pathological diagnosis was ALCL, ALK-negative. The patient was treated with cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, prednisolone chemotherapy. However, he died within one month.

CONCLUSION

Gastrointestinal ALCL needs to be considered in the differential diagnosis to avoid delaying treatment. Repeated biopsy is the most important for early diagnosis and treatment.

Keywords: Anaplastic large cell lymphoma, Anaplastic lymphoma kinase, Behcet's disease, Colon ulcer, Penis ulcer, Case report

Core tip: Anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) is a CD30-positive T cell lymphoma, a rare kind of non-Hodgkin lymphomas. ALCL rarely presents with the intestinal tract. In addition to reporting an anaplastic lymphoma kinase-negative ALCL involving the colon and penis in a 54-year-old male, our literature review identified 3 cases of gastrointestinal ALCL with several interesting clinicopathological features.