Early presentation of primary glioblastoma

Abstract

Background: Clinical and neuroimaging findings of glioblastomas (GBM) at an early stage have rarely been described and those tumors are most probably under-diagnosed. Furthermore, their genetic alterations, to our knowledge, have never been previously reported.

Methods: We report the clinical as well as neuroimaging findings of four early cases of patients with GBM.

Results: In our series, early stage GBM occurred at a mean age of 57 years. All patients had seizures as their first symptom. In all early stages, MRI showed a hyperintense signal on T2-weighted sequences and an enhancement on GdE-T1WI sequences. A hyperintense signal on diffusion sequences with a low ADC value was also found. These early observed occurrences of GBM developed rapidly and presented the MRI characteristics of classic GBM within a few weeks. The GBM size was multiplied by 32 in one month. Immunohistochemical analysis indicated the de novo nature of these tumors, i.e. absence of mutant IDH1 R132H protein expression, which is a diagnostic marker of low-grade diffuse glioma and secondary GBM.

Conclusions: A better knowledge of early GBM presentation would allow a more suitable management of the patients and may improve their prognosis.

Keywords: Biologie moléculaire; Diagnostic précoce; Early diagnosis; Glioblastoma; Glioblastome; Immunohistochemistry; Immunohistochimie; Molecular biology; Occult tumor; Tumeurs occultes.