Background: Castleman’s disease (CD) is a rare polyclonal lymphoproliferative disorder. Skin manifestations are known to occur in up to 55% of CD patients, but it has not yet been systematically reviewed.
Objectives: The aim of this study is to examine the clinical, histopathologic and laboratory characteristics of CD showing cutaneous disorders.
Methods: The medical records of all patients who visited our hospital from 2007 to 2018 were retrieved. Fifty seven patients were diagnosed with CD by computed-tomography and skin biopsy. We retrospectively reviewed medical records of 57 CD patients, and compared epidemiological, histological and laboratory findings between CD patients with or without cutaneous disorders. We newly sub-classified cutaneous disorders associated with CD according to underlying pathophysiology; autoantigen-related, cytokine-related and medication side effect.
Results: Mean age of the CD patients with cutaneous disorders was 46.8 years. Male-to-female ratio was 1:0.66. Thirteen patients (86.6%) were multicentric type (MCD). Plasma cell variant (PV) (n=8, 53.3%) was the most common histopathologic type. Eleven of 13 cases (84.6%) who conducted laboratory test had increasing ESR or CRP.
Conclusion: We confirmed that older patients with MCD, PV type are more dominant in CD with cutaneous disorders. ESR and CRP reflect elevated IL-6 which involves in cutaneous disorders associated with CD.