Castleman’s disease

Castleman’s disease (CD - sometimes spelled Castelman's) is a rare lymphoproliferative disorder. It is found especially in HIV-infected patients but also occurs in HIV-uninfected patients. Among the symptoms are fever, adenopathy, splenomegaly, hepatomegaly, and polyclonal gammopathy (heterogeneous increase in immunoglobulins). There are two types of CD:

• Localized CD, which is more common in patients that are not HIV-infected. This can be asymptomatic or there may be symptoms that result from
  compression of organs by enlarged lymph nodes.
   
• Multicentric CD, which is associated with HIV infection. These patients have numerous enlarged, usually peripheral, lymph nodes, fever and organomegaly, thrombocytopenia and anemia.

CD is  associated human herpes virus-8 (HHV-8 - Kaposi's sarcoma herpes virus), which is found in all HIV-infected CD patients and in about 40% of
CD patients without HIV infection. The disease appears to be worse with increased HHV-8 viral load. There is a correlation with serum levels of
viral interleukin-6.