Molecular genetic analysis of chromosome 22 in 81 cases of meningioma

Constitutional and tumor tissue genotypes from 81 unrelated patients with meningioma were compared at 25 polymorphic loci (restriction fragments length alleles) on chromosome 22. Thirty tumors (37%) retained the constitutional genotype along chromosome 22, a finding consistent with no detectable aberrations on chromosome 22 as studied. Forty-two tumors (52%) showed loss of one allele at all informative loci consistent with monosomy 22 in the tumor DNA. The remaining 9 tumors (11%) showed retained constitutional heterozygosity in the tumor DNA at one or more centromeric loci and loss of the heterozygosity at other telomeric loci, which is consistent with variable terminal deletions of one chromosome 22q in the tumor DNA. The localization of breakpoints in these 9 cases with deletions suggests that a meningioma locus is localized distal to myoglobin locus, within 22q12.3-qter. The male cases showed a higher percentage of tumors with no detectable aberrations on chromosome 22, a finding which may suggest that tumors of males have preferentially smaller rearrangements on chromosome 22q than those of females or that the male and female cases with no detected aberrations have another mechanism of oncogenesis. In view of the recent findings on the localization of the neurofibromatosis-2 gene on chromosome 22, the data from case 11 of our series suggests that the meningioma and the neurofibromatosis-2 loci are separate entities.