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

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.