 It is also known as Duncan Disease, after 6 of 18 males in the Duncan family died of lymphoproliferative disease, including fulminant infectious mononucleosis and lymphoma .It is also called "Purtilo's Syndrome", after Dr. David Theodore Purtilo (1939–1992), a pioneering Pathologist and Immunologist at the American Army Center for Pathology in Washington, who discovered it in the early 1970s.A native of Duluth, Minnesota, he pioneered the research for this condition after discovering it in one of his patients.