Clonal relationship of classical hodgkin lymphoma and its recurrences.

Purpose: We investigated whether the first and all subsequent manifestations of Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) in a patient are clonally related.

Experimental Design: We identified a collective of 20 patients with sometimes multiple HL recurrences. Relapses were classified as early, that is, within twelve months (eight events in seven patients) or as late, that is, later than one year after the previous neoplasm (24 events in 17 patients).