The lesion was diagnosed as Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL) and subtyped as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma-germinal centre (DLBCL-GCB) base on immunohistochemistry on cell block.
This N-glyco subproteome alone allowed the segregation of the ABC from the GCB subtypes of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, which before gene expression studies had been considered one disease entity.
Moreover, 11 of 39 (28.2%) of patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma not otherwise specified of ABC subtype and only 3 of 80 (3.7%) with the GCB subtype showed these monoclonal small B cells (P=0.0002).
Multiple markers are necessary to differentiate the GCB from the activated B-cell type of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma with a high degree of accuracy.