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Further evidence for a pseudoautosomal gene for Hodgkin's lymphoma: Reply to ‘The familial risk of Hodgkin's lymphoma ranks among the highest in the Swedish Family-Cancer Database’ by Altieri A and Hemminki K

Leukemia volume 21, page 351 (2007)Cite this article

Altieri and Hemminki recently reported on the familial risk for Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) in the Swedish Family-Cancer database.1 An incidental finding was that the risks for brothers of affected males or sisters of affected females greatly exceeded the risk for siblings of opposite gender. Sixteen of the 17 affected sibling pairs that they identified were of the same sex. They concluded that the ‘remarkable high risks found in same-sex siblings is not readily explainable, and it may be due to the small sample size or to yet unrecognized environmental or genetic factors.’

In fact, gender concordance among sibling pairs with HL was first reported by Grufferman et al.2 in the only other survey of this kind, which took place in New England from 1959 to 1973 and identified 13 pairs of affected siblings, in which 12 were of the same sex. Their further review of case reports published up until that time revealed that 30 of 46 sibling pairs with HL were gender concordant – a phenomenon that had previously gone unrecognized.2

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Acknowledgements

MEM is supported by a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Clinical Scientist Development Award.

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  1. Division of Medical Genetics, Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA

    M S Horwitz & M E Mealiffe

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  1. M S Horwitz
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Horwitz, M., Mealiffe, M. Further evidence for a pseudoautosomal gene for Hodgkin's lymphoma: Reply to ‘The familial risk of Hodgkin's lymphoma ranks among the highest in the Swedish Family-Cancer Database’ by Altieri A and Hemminki K. Leukemia 21, 351 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2404487

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