Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 1995, Vol 58, 218-221
Loss of heterozygosity for DNA polymorphisms mapping to chromosomes 10 and 17 and prognosis in patients with gliomas
CE Jones, MB Davis, JL Darling, JF Geddes, DG Thomas and AE Harding
Institute of Neurology, London, UK.
Twenty nine patients with gliomas were investigated for loss of
heterozygosity for 40 DNA polymorphisms in tumour DNA, particularly
concentrating on those mapping to chromosomes 10 and 17. Eight of 18 grade
IV gliomas showed loss of sequences from chromosomes 10, 17, or both. The
data suggested total loss of one copy of chromosome 10, but there were
interstitial deletions of the short arm of chromosome 17 in three of five
tumours. Heterogeneous interstitial deletions of chromosome 17 were also
found in two lower grade astrocytomas and one benign oligodendroglioma. The
striking finding of this study was that patients with high grade gliomas
whose tumours exhibited loss of heterozygosity for chromosomes 10, 17, or
both survived significantly longer after surgery (median 17.4 months) than
those whose tumours did not show loss of these chromosomes (median 6.7
months). These findings suggest that there is a subset of particularly
aggressive high grade gliomas with no currently known molecular genetic
abnormalities.
