In addition, these lymphomas occurred in men (15/15), frequently but not exclusively in association with HIV infection (13/15), in which homosexuality was a risk factor (13/13), presented initially as a lymphomatous effusion (14/15), remained localized to the body cavity of origin (13/15), expressed CD45 (15/15) and one or more activation-associated antigens (9/10) in the frequent absence of B-cell-associated antigens (11/15), exhibited clonal immunoglobulin gene rearrangements (13/13), contained Epstein-Barr virus (14/15), and lacked bcl-2, bcl-6, ras and p53 gene alterations (13/15).
The consistent reduction in surface expression of all CD45 isoforms observed in our study may be of relevance to the impaired T cell activation characteristic of HIV infection.