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Neuro-Oncology 2009 11(3):323-329; doi:10.1215/15228517-2008-099
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Copyright 2009 by the Society for Neuro-Oncology

Pediatric giant cell glioblastoma: New insights into a rare tumor entity

Michael Karremann, Sandra Butenhoff, Ulrike Rausche, Torsten Pietsch, Johannes E. A. Wolff and Christof M. Kramm

Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, Germany (M.K., S.B., U.R., C.M.K.); Department of Pediatrics, University Hospital Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany (M.K.); Department of Neuropathology, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University, Bonn, Germany (T.P.); Division of Pediatrics, Section of Pediatric Neuro-Oncology, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA (J.E.A.W.)

Address correspondence to Christof Kramm, Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Ernst-Grube-Straße 40, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany (christoph.kramm{at}medizin.uni-halle.de).


  Abstract

Little is known about giant cell glioblastoma (GCG) in pediatric patients. The present study identified 18 pediatric patients with centrally reviewed GCG from the HIT-GBM database of the Gesellschaft für Paediatrische Onkologie und Haematologie in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Clinical and epidemiological data were compared with those of 178 pediatric patients with centrally reviewed glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) from the same database. In this unique series, median age, male preference, and median clinical history did not differ significantly between pediatric GCG and GBM patients. GCG showed a stronger predilection for cerebral hemispheres than did GBM, which may only partly explain the higher percentage of gross total tumor resections in GCG patients. Most surprising, the widely distributed hypothesis that GCG may imply a better prognosis than GBM could not be substantiated for our pediatric series. Future studies with larger patient numbers and molecular pathological analyses are still needed to corroborate the present findings and further elucidate the biology of GCG in children.

Keywords: adolescents, children, giant cell glioblastoma, glioblastoma multiforme, pediatric

Received October 24, 2007; Accepted October 10, 2008


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