Early diagnosis of gastric lymphoma: gene rearrangement analysis of endoscopic biopsy samples.

The diagnosis of gastric lymphoma, in endoscopic biopsy specimens remains difficult despite the emergence of accepted criteria for the histologic diagnosis of lymphomas originating from mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT). The sensitlvity and validity of immunoglobulin (Ig) gene rearrangement analysis of mucosal biopsies for the diagnosis of malignant B-cell lymphoma were investigated in comparison with conventional histology and immunohistology. Biopsy specimens from 34 different endoscopies of 20 patients with a previous history, or tentative diagnosis of gastric lymphoma, and 12 control samples were analyzed for the presence of clonal Ig gene rearrangements. A clonal B-cell population was detected by Southern blot analysis in all patients with a definitive histologic diagnosis of lymphoma