Intraventricular cerebral neuroblastoma. Analysis of subtypes and comparison with hemispheric neuroblastoma.

Two cases of intraventricular neuroblastomas were compared with cases of intraventricular and hemispheric neuroblastomas that have been reported in the published literature. The following order of tumor subtypes was found in patients with increasing age: hemispheric neuroblastoma, intraventricular undifferentiated neuroblastoma, intraventricular differentiated neuroblastoma, and intraventricular neurocytoma; for patients with intraventricular neuroblastomas, this was also the order of increasing cellular maturation and survival. Neuronal morphologic or epitope differentiation was associated with a longer survival time than lack of differentiation by Kaplan-Meier product-limit estimates and with a better survival rate (chi 2) for intraventricular tumors but not for hemispheric tumors.

In utero brain damage: relationship of gestational age to pathological consequences.

The authors examined the brains of two infants in whom episodes of fetal compromise could be accurately correlated with gestational age. A mother who had sustained hypotensive shock at 16 weeks gestation gave birth at 20 weeks to a stillborn infant whose brain showed cystic necrosis of the lenticular nuclei and multifocal polymicrogyria. The brain of a seven-month-old infant born at 33 weeks gestation to a mother who had experienced respiratory arrest during her 28th week showed thalamic and brainstem necrosis accompanied by diffuse white matter gliosis.

Intracranial lipomas with teratomatous elements.

We report two cases of patients with intracranial tumors that share features with lipomas and teratomas. Although rare reports of lipomas with "hypertrophic nerves" and "teratoid tumors" have been recorded, these two cases are unusual because they contain mature neuroectoderm (choroid plexus, peripheral nerve) and mesoderm (skeletal muscle). The findings are discussed and modern classification schemes are presented.

Amyloidoma of the CNS. I. Clinical and pathologic study.

We report a 32-year-old man with a 4-year history of headaches, seizures, and dementia secondary to multifocal amyloidomas in the white matter. Immunohistochemical and electron microscopic analyses suggest that the amyloidomas resulted from processing of plasma-cell-derived amyloidogenic protein by microglial cells.

Immunohistochemical properties of human optic nerve glioma. Evidence of type 1 astrocyte origin.

The peroxidase-antiperoxidase method was used to study ten surgically obtained human optic nerve gliomas (pilocytic astrocytomas). All tissues were formalin fixed and paraffin embedded. Primary antisera included glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), HNK-1 (type 1 astrocyte precursor marker), A2B5 (type 2 astrocyte precursor marker), S-100, vimentin, myelin basic protein (MBP), laminin, keratin, cytokeratin, epithelial membrane antigen (EMA), and neuron-specific enolase (NSE).