Whipple's disease: benefit of the fine-needle aspiration cytology from lymph nodes.

Service d'Anatomie et Cytologie Pathologiques, Centre Hospitalier, Saint-Quentin, France.

We report a case of Whipple's disease with predominant neurological symptoms and without any clinical digestive sign. The diagnosis was suspected by fine-needle aspiration from an axillary lymph node and confirmed by the duodenal biopsy and ultrastructural results. Whipple's disease is a rare, chronic, systemic infectious disease. Electron microscopy and PCR on paraffin blocks are very helpful when histologic findings are not discriminant. On cytologic examination, the major differential diagnosis is mycobacterial adenitis. Here we highlight the possibility of diagnosis Whipple's disease on mere cytological material.

PMID: 10598371 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]