Histological and Immunohistochemical Study of 30 Cases of Canine Meningioma

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Summary

This report describes the incidence, location and histopathological and immunohistochemical features of 30 canine meningiomas, of which 22 were intracranial, three were retrobulbar and five were located in the spinal canal. Nine types of meningioma were diagnosed: transitional (9), meningothelial (5), psammomatous (3), anaplastic (3), fibroblastic (2), angioblastic (2), papillary (2), microcystic (1) and meningiomas arising from the optic nerve (3). One of the optic nerve tumours had a granular cell component. All tumours were examined immunohistochemically with antibodies against vimentin, S100, neuron-specific enolase (NSE), cytokeratin (CK) and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP). Vimentin was demonstrated in all tumours, and concentric whorls of cells showed more intense labelling than did bundles of fibroblastic cells. S100 labelling was detected in all tumours except a single angioblastic meningioma. The intensity of labelling for S100 was lower than that for vimentin, and bundles of fibroblastic cells showed particularly strong positivity. NSE labelling was highly variable, but most tumours displayed moderate positivity. CK expression was observed in five of the 30 meningiomas, and was stronger in areas of microcystic differentiation. Most of the tumours were GFAP-negative, but two fibroblastic meningiomas were strongly positive.

Introduction

Meningiomas are frequently occurring primary tumours of the nervous system in both human beings and domestic animals (Summers et al., 1995; Lantos et al., 1997). Meningiomas in dogs occur more commonly in the brain than in the spinal cord (Summers et al., 1995; Koestner and Higgins, 2002). Within the brain, they grow over the convexities, in the midline attached to the falx cerebri, below the brainstem, attached to the tentorium cerebelli or inside the ventricular system, associated with the choroid plexuses. Rarely, they may be retrobulbar (Summers et al., 1995; Mauldin et al., 2000). Extracranial metastases are uncommon but have been reported in the lung (Schulman et al., 1992b; Dugan et al., 1993).

Human meningiomas are particularly common in females (Lantos et al., 1997), but no sex predilection is apparent in canine meningiomas (Patnaik et al., 1986). Certain breeds of dogs, such as German shepherds, collies, terriers, boxers, golden retrievers and poodles, are reported to be affected more commonly than others (Andrews, 1973; Patnaik et al., 1986).

Meningiomas in man and domestic animals are histologically diverse and can undergo mesenchymal and epithelial differentiation (Summers et al., 1995; Bruner et al., 1998). They exhibit highly variable morphological patterns. The current World Health Organization (WHO) classification of human meningiomas divides these tumours into 14 types, based on histomorphological features (Louis et al., 2000). The most recent classification of meningiomas in domestic animals describes nine histological patterns: meningothelial, fibrous (fibroblastic), transitional (mixed), psammomatous, angiomatous, papillary, granular cell, myxoid and anaplastic (malignant) (Koestner et al., 1999). All, except the anaplastic ones, are slow growing (Koestner et al., 1999).

The purpose of this study was to describe the histological and immunohistochemical features of 30 canine meningiomas classified according to the Domestic Animal World Health Organization Classification of Meningiomas (Koestner et al., 1999), and to investigate differences in the immunohistochemical pattern of different meningioma subtypes.

Section snippets

Tumours

Thirty canine meningiomas diagnosed by the animal histopathology service of the Autonomous University of Barcelona between 1990 and 2004 were chosen for the study. Of 406 nervous tissue tumours (which included a large number of peripheral nerve sheath tumours) diagnosed during this period, 49 were meningiomas. Only tumours with an unequivocal diagnosis of meningioma were included. Clinical data and good quality of the archived samples were also essential requirements. Clinical data included

Results

Of the 30 dogs from which meningiomas were derived (Table 1), 15 were male and 15 were female. Their mean age was 9 years (range 2–15) and 18 (63%) dogs were aged 9 years or older. Nine breeds were represented, the most common being mixed breed dogs (46%), German shepherds (22%) and boxers (13%). Twenty-two meningiomas were located intracranially (16 in the cerebral hemispheres, three in the brainstem, one in the cerebellum, and two in an unspecified site); three meningiomas were retrobulbar,

Discussion

As in previous studies (Andrews, 1973; Patnaik et al., 1986), no sex predilection was found. It was of interest, however, that five dogs with spinal meningiomas were all female, in contrast to an earlier report (Fingeroth et al., 1987) in which most similarly affected dogs were male. In human beings, the prevalence of cranial and spinal meningiomas in women is higher than in men (Lantos et al., 1997; Bruner et al., 1998). In animals, a breed predilection for German shepherds, boxers, poodles,

Acknowledgments

The authors thanks B. Pérez and A. Neira for technical support.

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