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Significant Aspects of Childhood Lymphoma in Africa^*

( Pathologic Anatomy Branch, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland)

A clinically bizarre tumor involving the jaw and facial bones of children has been recognized for almost 50 years in central Africa, but only recently has it been identified as a manifestation of lymphosarcoma. Studies in East Africa have shown that an approximately equal number of afflicted children do not have manifestations of the tumor at these unusual sites and that the disease differs from lymphosarcoma found in other geographic areas only in a high frequency and the unusual propensity for growth in the jaw, which is found in about half the cases. With these observations in mind, and since both features which distinguish the disease in Africa have the same rather definite geographical limits, it is suggested that local environmental factors such as endemic parasitic and virus diseases, rather than playing a direct etiologic role, may have a more indirect effect by altering host susceptibility and response. Comparative epidemiological studies of the endemic diseases in high- and low-risk populations, with particular attention to the jaw and lymphoreticular system, may reveal differences in the two groups which can be related to an increased susceptibility for this type of neoplastic proliferation.

^* Presented at a symposium on "Epidemiology of Cancer," given at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, Toronto, Canada, on May 23, 1963.

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