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The article discusses a study which identified a series of 5 consecutive patients presenting with hypomegakaryocytic thrombocytopenia (HMT) and low-to-intermediate risk myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). Topics covered include the clinical characteristics of patients, the role of immune dysregulation in the pathophysiology of MDS, and the response of patients to ciclosporin (CsA) therapy.

Positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) scanning has been shown to be more sensitive than bone marrow biopsy (BMB) in detecting bone marrow involvement (BMI) in classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL). In this 5-year retrospective series, 93 (54%) of all new cases of cHL were staged using PET-CT and BMB. PET-CT identified focal bone marrow uptake in 17/93 (18.3%), whilst only five of these (29.4%) were confirmed by BMB. Abnormal pelvic uptake was seen on PET-CT in these five cases. The other 12 cases were missed, giving BMB a sensitivity of 29.4% and a specificity of 100%. PET-CT upstaged 9.7% of patients compared to CT alone. BMB upstaged only one patient; however, this patient was already stage IV on PET-CT. BMB did not alter clinical management in any case. Bone positivity on PET-CT appeared to correlate with anemia, raised lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and B symptoms. BMB has little or nothing to offer staging cHL in the PET-CT era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central nervous system relapse of primary cutaneous CD8+ aggressive epidermotropic cytotoxic T-cell lymphoma There was no evidence of systemic disease on computed tomography (CT) imaging and therefore a diagnosis of primary cutaneous CD8 SP + sp aggressive epidermotropic cytotoxic T-cell lymphoma was made. Cutaneous CD8 SP + sp T-cell lymphoma is a rare and aggressive lymphoma. [Extracted from the article]