Recent progress in follicular lymphoma in Japan and characteristics of the duodenal type

The incidence of lymphoma has rapidly increased over the last 40 years in Japan, following a trend that is very similar to that of breast cancer. In particular, the relative frequency of follicular lymphoma (FL) has reached that in Western countries. Given its indolence, a “watch-and-wait” approach is often applied to FL patients. We have shown that FL is often detected in the second portion of the duodenum and has a distinct follicular dendritic cell distribution and heavy chain variable usage similar to mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma. Although the t(14;18)(q32;q21) frequency is the same as in the nodal subtype of FL, there are also ongoing mutations, immunopositivity for cluster of differentiation 10 and B-cell lymphoma (BCL)6, and overexpression of BCL2. Gene expression profiling has shown that it is more similar to gastric MALT lymphoma than to nodal FL. Duodenal-type FL lacks the activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) expression observed in nodal ones, although this may be compensated for by BTB domain and CNC homolog 2. Based on these findings, duodenal-type FL has been included in the Revised 4th edition of the World Health Organization classification published in late 2017.