Immunohistochemical Study of Medullolastomas and Cerebral Primitive Neuroectodermal Tumors.

Lee, Jung Il; Wang, Kyu Chang; Chi, Je Geun; Cho, Byung Kyu

Original Article

Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society 1995;24(8): 857-863.

Jung Il Lee, Kyu Chang Wang, Je Geun Chi, Byung Kyu Cho

¹Department of Neurosurgery, Seoul National Unviersity, College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
²Department of Pathology, Seoul National Unviersity, College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.

ABSTRACT

Although it is becoming widely accepted that medulloblastoma and cerebral primitive neuroectodermal tumor(PNET) are identical tumors occurring at different locations, there are some controversies in their orgin and pathological classification. As a method of investigating whether the tumors are identical in pathological aspects, immunohistochemical characteristics of medulloblastomas and cerebral PNETs were compared in this study. Also the prognostic significance of the immunohistochemical findings in medulloblastoma patients was analyzed. Clinical features of twenty-seven patients with medulloblastoma and eleven patients with cerebral PNET were reviewed, excluding tumors with significant cellular differentiation such as ependymoblastoma, pineoblastoma and neuroblastoma. The presence of glial fibrillary acidic protein(GFAP), neurofilament(NF), S-100 protein, vimentin, synaptophysin, and epithelial membrane antigen(EMA) was examined with immunohistochemical method and the differences of the results between the two tumors were statistically analyzed. The positive rates of NF and synaptophysin were significantly higher in medulloblastomas(p=0.006 and 0.003, respectively) and so was the positive rate of vimentin in cerebral PNET's(p=0.004). S-100 protein showed a higher positive rate in cerebral PNETs althought it was not statistically significant. Univariate and multivariate analyses did not show any significant correlation between the duration of survival and the presence of cellular antigens.

Key Words: Medulloblastoma; Primitive neuroectodermal tumor; Immunohistochemistry; Survival