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A death from Langerhans cell histiocytosis and tuberculosis in 18th Century Hungary – what palaeopathology can tell us today

Leukemia volume 20, pages 740–742 (2006)Cite this article

In a differential diagnosis of these findings, we have excluded the possibility of the lesions being due to miliary tuberculosis because of the X-ray appearance, and also such diseases as chronic granulomatous disease (CGD). The latter represents a group of genetic disorders in which impaired intracellular microbial killing by phagocytes leads to granuloma formation caused by recurrent bacterial and fungal infections. In CGD, bony lesions are common but while these are destructive they should, as do nearly all such lesions due to bacteria, show some evidence of attempted healing.2

Langerhans' cell histiocytosis (LCH), also referred to as Histiocytosis-X, is a spectrum of disorders characterised by overproliferation and accumulation as lesions of ‘histiocytes’ – tissue-resident macrophages and dendritic cells, which are derived from bone-marrow stem cells in the various tissues and organs of the body.3 The lesions can include Langerhans cells, the distinctive epidermal antigen-presenting dendritic cells, as well as other white blood cells such as monocytes or eosinophils. The second form of histiocytosis most often encountered in children is haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), a disease of mononuclear phagocytes.

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Acknowledgements

The technical laboratory assistance of Poonam Gopal is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are due to Stewart Laidlaw, UCL Institute of Archaeology for photography. Professor Christine Hall, Radiology Department, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London and Dr Jacob Applebaum from the Hadassah Hospital Radiology Department, Jerusalem, Israel kindly assisted with the X-ray presentation and interpretation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Infection, Centre for Infectious Diseases and International Health, Windeyer Institute of Medical Sciences, UCL, London, UK

    M Spigelman & H D Donoghue

  2. Department of Anthropology, Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest, Hungary

    I Pap

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  1. M Spigelman
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  2. I Pap
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  3. H D Donoghue
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Correspondence to M Spigelman.

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Spigelman, M., Pap, I. & Donoghue, H. A death from Langerhans cell histiocytosis and tuberculosis in 18th Century Hungary – what palaeopathology can tell us today. Leukemia 20, 740–742 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2404103

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