Studies on the Genetic Characterization of Waldenström Macroglobulinemia

In 1944 the Swedish physician Jan Gösta Waldenström (1906-1996) reported two patients, displaying symptoms of oronasal bleeding, lymphadenopathy, anemia, thrombocytopenia, increased erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and an abnormal serum protein of high molecular weight.1,2 The absence of bone pain, lack of lytic bone lesions on radiographs and the presence of an excess of lymphoid cells in bone marrow, made him understand that this disease entity was different from multiple myeloma, in which lytic bone lesions are common and bone marrow is infiltrated by plasma cells. To this day, his original description of clinical characteristics and laboratory abnormalities still forms the basis of the diagnosis of a distinct clinicopathologic entity, which bears his name, Waldenström macroglobulinemia.