Gastrointestinal manifestations in Castleman's disease.

Abstract

Castleman's disease is a relatively rare disorder of lymphoid tissue. The disease is considered benign in its localized form, but severe in the multicentric type. Gastrointestinal manifestations were occasionally described. We herein report four patients with histologically proved Castleman's disease in whom various and different clinical and pathological manifestations were found in the gastrointestinal tract, correlated with the primary disease. We believe that the digestive tract may be secondarily involved in Castleman's disease and, in some cases, gives the first manifestation of the disease.