Burkitt Lymphoma

Introduction

Burkitt lymphoma (BL) is an aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) that is related with the translocations of chromosome 8 that carries the c-myc gene locus on one of the immunoglobulin (Ig) heavy chain on chromosome 14 t(8;14). Dr. Denis Burkitt was the man that gave a fully description about this disease in 1958 (Jacobson and LaCasce, 2014; Borkankamm, 2009). He detected unusual masses in various regions particularly in children’s jaw and neck while working in equatorial Africa and was the first person to suggest that BL was a type of cancer although it was knows as sarcoma (Miles, et al., 2012). Epstein and his colleagues detected the virus, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) within these lymphomas which then became the beginning
High percentage of endemic BL is highly related with EBV while low percentage of sporadic and immunodeficiency-associated is EBV positive. EBV belongs to the herpes family of double stranded DNA viruses and this virus may infect people during their life time that associates to various diseases and malignancies (God and Haque, 2010). BL cells usually consist of round nuclei, not cleaved, has nucleoli and vacuoles at deep basophilic cytoplasm (Linch,
The four stages of BL are based upon Murphy/St Jude system (Table 1) that is used for lymphomas in children and Ann Arbor system which is used for lymphomas in adults. Minority of patients represent stages I or II whereas majority of the patients are found in stages III and IV (Ferry, 2006). Basically as the stages of BL increases the distribution of lymphoma becomes