Hodgkin's disease and anergy.

The clinical, pathologic, and immunologic features unique to Hodgkin's disease can be explained by the following hypothesis. A viral transformation of a lymph node cell leads to proliferation of tumor cells and the generation of an immune response consisting of lymphokine production, B cell activation and concomitant suppression of further T cell activation, but ineffective cellular cytotoxicity against the tumor cells. The result of this interaction would be chronic infiltration around the transformed cells, increased immunoglobulin synthesis, and anergy. Failure to destroy the target cells would result in chronicity of these features and progressive disease.