Possible Association of Multicentric Castleman's Disease with Autoimmune Lymphoproliferative Syndrome

Multicentric Castleman's disease (MCD) is lymphoproliferative disorder characterized by systemic inflammatory symptoms such as fever and weight loss. Human herpes virus-8 (HHV-8) is thought to be a causable pathogen in all HIV-positive and some HIV-negative MCD patients. Furthermore, the term idiopathic MCD (iMCD) was recently proposed to represent a group of HIV-negative and HHV-8-negative patients with unknown etiologies. Although the international diagnostic criteria for iMCD require exclusion of infection-related disorders, autoimmune/autoinflammatory diseases and malignant/lymphoproliferative disorders to make an iMCD diagnosis, the relationships and differences between these disorders and MCD have not yet been clarified. We recently reported the first case of MCD with autoimmune lymphoproliferative syndrome (ALPS). Although ALPS was included in the iMCD exclusion criteria as an autoimmune/autoinflammatory disease according to the international diagnostic criteria, there is a lack of evidence on the association between MCD and ALPS. In this study, we review the recent understanding of MCD and discuss the possible association between MCD with ALPS.