Photo gallery: skin lesions of B-Cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Lymphoproliferative diseases are characterized by abnormal production and accumulation of lymphocytes in the bone marrow, blood, and lymphoid organs/tissues and most often develop in individuals with a weakened immune system.

Despite significant progress in the study of lymphoproliferative diseases, the diagnosis and especially the differential diagnosis of skin changes in leukemia present considerable difficulties. These difficulties are associated not only with the diversity of clinical symptoms but also with the external similarity of lesions to those seen in inflammatory dermatoses, as well as the absence of distinct cellular atypia in some cases, particularly at the disease onset.

In the vast majority of patients, skin lesions occur simultaneously with the appearance of objective symptoms of the underlying disease or during its advanced clinical stage.

Unlike primary cutaneous malignant lymphomas, in leukemia, regardless of the time of onset, skin symptoms are considered secondary to the underlying disease, i.e., caused by systemic involvement of the hematopoietic or lymphoid tissue.

Skin lesions in leukemia are typically divided into specific and nonspecific types due to their substantial differences in pathogenetic, clinical, and morphological features.

At the same time, this division, while convenient in clinical practice, is somewhat conditional because it is based on histological structure rather than morphological characteristics.

This article presents various types of skin lesions in lymphoproliferative diseases to improve diagnosis, including differential diagnosis, and to ensure timely administration of appropriate treatment.