Cold agglutinin autoimmune haemolytic anaemia as an initial presentation of diffuse large B cell lymphoma: A case study

Abstract

Cold agglutinin disease, commonly affecting females in the their seventh decade of life, is otherwise a rare entity and has an incidence of one case per million people per year. Cold reactive antibody is associated with autoimmune haemolytic anaemia (AIHA) in approximately 20% of the cases. Although the occurrence of AIHA in patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphomas is well known, aggressive lymphomas such as diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) initially presenting as cold agglutinin AIHA is extremely rare. Here, we describe a case of DLBCL presenting few months before the diagnosis as cold antibody-AIHA.xs