Overall, our results suggest that germline mutations of NFKBIA are not a significant cause of familial aggregation of HL but may contribute to inherited susceptibility to HL.
These results, in combination with recently described IkappaBalpha mutations, indicate that defective NF-kappaB inhibitors appear more frequent than previously thought and might explain the constitutive nuclear activity of NF-kappaB in a significant proportion of cHL cases.
Taken together, although it is not clear whether normal IkappaBalpha protein was expressed in hematologic malignancies, mutations of IkappaBalpha could be rare events in these diseases, except for Hodgkin's lymphoma.
We suggest that the observed IkappaBalpha mutations contribute to constitutive NF-kappaB activity in cultured and primary HRS cells and are therefore involved in the pathogenesis of these Hodgkin's disease (HD) patients.