Epidemiology of Nervous System Tumors in Children: A Survey of 1,485 Cases in Beijing Tiantan Hospital from 2001 to 2005

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of the present retrospective study was to describe the epidemiology of nervous system tumors in children based on the clinical data obtained from a neurosurgical center in Beijing. Patients and Methods: During a 5-year period, from January 2001 to December 2005, 1,485 primary brain and spinal tumors in children up to 17 years of age were diagnosed histopathologically according to the World Health Organization 2000 nervous system tumor classification. The sex predilection, tumor location, and histological grade in relation to age were investigated, and the epidemiological characteristics of the 5 most common brain tumors are discussed. Result: Of the 1,485 cases evaluated, brain and spinal tumors comprised 92.3% (1,371) and 7.7% (114), respectively, with a predominance of low-grade tumors (65.1 and 78.9% for brain and spinal cord, respectively). For all tumors, the overall sex ratio (male to female) was 1.6:1. 61.9% of the brain tumors were supratentorial, whereas an infratentorial location was slightly more common in the 872 brain tumors of neuroepithelial tissue (53.7%). The 5 most common brain tumors were astrocytic tumors (30.5%), craniopharyngiomas (18.4%), medulloblastomas (14.6%), germ cell tumors (GCTs, 7.9%) and ependymal tumors (5.6%). The highest preponderance of boys was observed in GCTs followed by medulloblastomas. The most common types of spinal tumors were ependymal tumors (19.3%), neurilemmomas (16.7%) and astrocytomas (14.9%). Conclusions: Based on a large hospital series of pediatric patients, the present survey revealed the histopathological diversity of childhood neurological neoplasms, and provides a reliable profile of the epidemiology of nervous system tumors in children in a developing country.

Descriptive Epidemiology of Childhood Central Nervous System Tumours in Tunisia

“…Craniopharyngiomas were found in 5.3% of our patients. This incidence was lower than those reported in Syria (14.1%), China (18.4 and 12.8%), Brazil (11%), Korea (12%), Mexico (10%), Nigeria (11.8%) and Japan (12.5%) [3, 4, 7, 15, 16, 20, 23]. In most published series, craniopharyngiomas were more frequent than cystic tumours, whereas in our series they closely followed cystic tumours.…”

“…There is a noticeable variance internationally with regards to the location of paediatric brain tumours. The supratentorial location of the tumours was reported to be the predominant site by some authors from Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Korea, China, Brazil and New Zealand [3, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22,23,24]. Conversely, other studies showed a predominance of the posterior fossa location in comparison with the supratentorial compartment, namely in Syria, United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden and Canada [5, 6, 13, 16].…”

Childhood Tumors of the Brain: Demographic Pattern over a Ten-Year Period in the Kashmir Valley

“…The craniopharyngiomas were of the adamantinomatous type, and all the pituitary tumors were nonfunctioning. When comparing our series with other studies from the Far East (China) [3], Middle East (Syria) [2], Africa (Tunisia) [5], Europe (Germany) [4], North America (USA [6] and Canada [7]), we observed that astrocytomas were the most common tumors in most of the series, except in a series from Syria in which medulloblastoma was the most common tumor reported (table 5; fig. 2).…”

“…There are several studies on the epidemiology and distribution of brain tumors from Asia [2,3], Europe [4], Africa [5] and North America [6,7] which show different patterns in different regions. No such study is available from India; thus we analyzed brain tumors in pediatric age in the Kashmir Valley, which is a geographically distinct zone stretching over a 200 × 200 mile area in the Himalayan Mountains, and the incidence of various tumors is different from that in the rest of India [8,9].…”

Treatment of pediatric Grade II spinal ependymomas: a population-based study

“…The higher incidence and worse outcomes of parenchymal CNS tumors in male versus female patients, independent of age, race, tumor histology (including gliomas, ependymomas, and medulloblastomas), and country of residence/origin, has been reported in the literature. 3,30,35,37,46,52,58,63,70 Sun et al, in a review examining this disparity, postulated that it may be due to sexually dimorphic biology, specifically sex chromosome-based mechanisms of growth regulation. 63 Male embryos are larger, contain more cells, and show differential expression of genes important for glucose metabolism (G6PD and HPRT1), cellular growth (XIAP), and gene regulation (DMNT3A and DMNT3B); these differences are evident at the blastocyst stage, before gonadal differentiation at 8 weeks.…”