GENERALIZED TRICHOPHYTON RUBRUM INFECTION ASSOCIATED WITH SYSTEMIC LYMPHOBLASTOMA

Abstract

OUR INTEREST in this subject dates from 1945, when a patient who later died of leukemia presented a generalized erythroderma considered at first to be specifically and solely related to the blood dyscrasia. However, scrapings from multiple sites revealed filaments, and on culture Trichophyton rubrum (purpureum) was isolated. Since then two additional cases of lymphoblastoma have been observed in which widespread T. rubrum infections were coincidentally present. OTHER FUNGI AND LYMPHOBLASTOMA The observation of Fitchett and Weidman,¹reported in 1934, that tissue from a patient with Hodgkin's disease yielded a colony of fungus diagnosed as Cryptococcus (Torula) histolytica, raised the question of a possible close association of apparently dissimilar diseases. Some of the culture was injected into the meninges of a cat, and a picture like that of Hodgkin's disease was reproduced histologically. This suggested that Hodgkin's disease might have a fungal origin. However, that possibility