The influence of parental age and gender on anticipation in familial B-cell malignancies.

Anticipation occurs when a disease manifests at an earlier age and/or with an increased clinical severity in the next generation. Its relationship with parental age and gender is relevant to the patterns of genetic transmission of familial B-cell neoplasms. One hundred and sixty pairs [44 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), 38 Hodgkin's disease (HD), 48 HD/NHL, and 30 CLL] were analyzed retrospectively for presence of anticipation in paternal (PT), maternal (MT), and overall transmission. Overall mean anticipation measured -23.0 yr, and varied between -18.93 and -26.46 yr with no significant difference among different diseases, except between CLL and mixed HD/NHL (mean difference -7.68 yr, p = 0.03). A significant Pearson correlation (PC) between the parental age at conception and anticipation was found for all malignancies (PC = -0.339, p < 0.0001), with the exception of mixed HD/NHL pairs of MT. Higher PCs were observed with PT than MT for all diseases. Anticipation manifests in all familial B-cell malignancies analyzed and it correlates with the parental age at conception. Although less prominent than with neurological disease, this phenomenon indicates a possible germline inheritance of B-cell malignancies and a common genetic basis for HD and NHL.