Abstract
We report the case of an elderly woman with a history of headache, vomiting and dizziness while walking. On CT scans a mass was identified in the right cerebellar hemisphere exhibiting radiological characteristics of lipomatous tissue. Surgery revealed a compact lesion consisting of whitish-yellow tissue with a fatty aspect and texture. Smears of tissue samples and paraffin sections showed features suggestive of tissue mainly composed of fully differentiated lipocytes. Lipid-specific stainings on fresh frozen material confirmed univacuolar intracytoplasmic fat accumulation. However, immunohistochemistry for glial fibrillary acidic protein and electron microscopy clearly demonstrated the glial lineage of these lipid-laden cells. Therefore, the tumor was diagnosed as a highly lipidized astrocytoma. In our view, this case represents a variant of lipidized gliomas that has not been described previously and that differs phenotypically from the entities documented earlier.
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Walter, A., Troost, D., Dingemans, K.P. et al. Cerebellar astrocytoma with extensive lipidization mimicking adipose tissue. Acta Neuropathol 88, 485–489 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00389504
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00389504