Immunohistochemical expression profile and prognosis in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma with or without human immunodeficiency virus infection.

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is the most common lymphoma subtype in non-immunosuppressed and in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive patients. The prognosis of DLBCL with germinal center (GC) phenotype is better than that of the non-germinal center (non-GC) phenotype by immunohistochemical expression profile (IHC) in some studies but not in others. The frequency and the prognosis of these phenotypic subtypes in DLBCL related to HIV infection is not well known. The objectives of this study were to characterize the IHC by tissue microarray in 98 patients with DLBCL, 34 of whom were HIV-positive, and to evaluate their prognosis. Patients with HIV-related DLBCL with a non-GC pattern had poorer prognosis than patients with non-HIV-related DLBCL with the same pattern, but this difference disappeared when we considered only patients receiving HAART.