• Marco Giulioni, Gianluca Marucci, Massimo Cossu, Laura Tassi, Manuela Bramerio, Carmen Barba, Anna Maria Buccoliero, Gianfranco Vornetti, Corrado Zenesini, Alessandro Consales, Luca De Palma, Flavio Villani, Giancarlo Di Gennaro, Giampaolo Vatti, Nelia Zamponi, Gabriella Colicchio, and Carlo Efisio Marras.
• UOC Neurochirurgia, IRCCS Istituto delle Scienze Neurologiche di Bologna, Bologna, Italy. Electronic address: giulioni.m@tiscali.it.
• World Neurosurg. 2019 Jan 1; 121: e761-e768.

ObjectiveTo analyze relationships between CD34 expression and several demographic, clinical, and pathologic features in patients with histopathologic evidence of low-grade epilepsy-associated tumors who underwent epilepsy surgery.MethodsA retrospective study enrolling 187 patients with low-grade epilepsy-associated tumors who underwent surgery between January 2009 and June 2015 at 8 Italian epilepsy surgery centers was conducted. All cases were histologically diagnosed according to the World Health Organization classification of central nervous system tumors. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to identify variables associated with CD34 expression.ResultsOf 187 patients, 95 (50.8%) were CD34 positive. Tumor type and duration of epilepsy were independently associated with CD34 expression on multivariate analysis. Ganglioglioma and pleomorphic xanthoastrocytoma were the histologic types with the strongest association with CD34 positivity with an odds ratio of 9.2 and 10.4, respectively, compared with dysembryoplastic neuroepithelial tumors. Patients with a duration of epilepsy >10 years had a significantly greater likelihood to show CD34 expression, with an odds ratio of 2.8 compared with patients with a duration of epilepsy <2 years. On univariate analysis, CD34 expression appeared to be significantly related to older age at surgery, higher antiepileptic drug intake, and female sex.ConclusionsCD34 expression holds promise as a useful biomolecular marker for patients with low-grade epilepsy-associated tumors with evidence of a link with clinicopathologic features. This study confirmed the association between CD34 expression and tumor type and demonstrated a significantly higher probability of CD34 expression in patients with longer duration of epilepsy, independent of histology.Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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