Hepatosplenic T‐cell lymphomas and therapy with TNF‐α‐blocking biologics: a risk for psoriasis patients?

Summary Tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α antagonists have considerably improved the therapeutic approach to chronic inflammatory disorders including psoriasis vulgaris. Recently, some cases of highly aggressive hepatosplenic T-cell lymphoma (HSTCL) have developed in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) being treated with infliximab or adalimumab. Analysis of the published data suggests that the emergence of HSTCL is favored by the combination of purine analogues and infliximab or adalimumab in the therapy of a granulomatous inflammation involving Vδ1+γδ T cells. Because psoriasis vulgaris is different from IBD in regard to the type of inflammation, the concomitant therapies used and the tissue-specific subsets of γδ T cells, the use of infliximab or adali-mumab in psoriasis may not necessarily be associated with an increase in the risk of HSTCL.