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A new era for optic pathway glioma: A developmental brain tumor with life-long health consequences

Optic pathway and hypothalamic glioma (OPHG) are low-grade brain tumors that arise from any part of the visual pathways frequently involving the hypothalamus. The tumors grow slowly and present with features driven by their precise anatomical site, their age at presentation and the stage of growth a...

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Autores principales: Walker, David A., Aquilina, Kristian, Spoudeas, Helen, Pilotto, Chiara, Gan, Hoong-Wei, Meijer, Lisethe
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10080591/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37033188
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fped.2023.1038937
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author Walker, David A.
Aquilina, Kristian
Spoudeas, Helen
Pilotto, Chiara
Gan, Hoong-Wei
Meijer, Lisethe
author_facet Walker, David A.
Aquilina, Kristian
Spoudeas, Helen
Pilotto, Chiara
Gan, Hoong-Wei
Meijer, Lisethe
author_sort Walker, David A.
collection PubMed
description Optic pathway and hypothalamic glioma (OPHG) are low-grade brain tumors that arise from any part of the visual pathways frequently involving the hypothalamus. The tumors grow slowly and present with features driven by their precise anatomical site, their age at presentation and the stage of growth and development of the host neural and orbital bony tissues. Up to 50% of optic pathway glioma arise in association with Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), which affects 1 in 3,000 births and is a cancer predisposition syndrome. As low-grade tumors, they almost never transform to malignant glioma yet they can threaten life when they present under two years of age. The main risks are to threaten vision loss by progressive tumor damage to optic pathways; furthermore, invasion of the hypothalamus can lead to diencephalic syndrome in infancy and hypopituitarism later in life. Progressive cognitive and behavioural dysfunction can occur, as part of NF1 syndromic features and in sporadic cases where large bulky tumors compress adjacent structures and disrupt neuro-hypothalamic pathways. Persistently progressive tumors require repeated treatments to attempt to control vision loss, other focal brain injury or endocrine dysfunction. In contrast tumors presenting later in childhood can be seen to spontaneously arrest in growth and subsequently progress after periods of stability. These patterns are influenced by NF status as well as stages of growth and development of host tissues. The past two decades has seen an expansion in our understanding and knowledge of the clinical and scientific features of these tumors, their modes of presentation, the need for careful visual and endocrine assessment. This influences the decision-making surrounding clinical management with surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and most recently, the potential benefit of molecularly targeted drug therapy. This article, based upon the authors' clinical and research experience and the published literature will highlight advances in approach to diagnosis, the established role of vision loss as justification of treatments and the emerging evidence of endocrine and neurological consequences that need to be incorporated into judgements for case selection for therapy or observation. Consideration is given to the current state of biological evidence justifying current trials of new therapies, the genetic studies of the NF1 gene and the potential for new approaches to OPHG detection and treatment. The outstanding health system priorities from the perspective of children, their parents and health system commissioners or insurers are discussed.
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spelling pubmed-100805912023-04-08 A new era for optic pathway glioma: A developmental brain tumor with life-long health consequences Walker, David A. Aquilina, Kristian Spoudeas, Helen Pilotto, Chiara Gan, Hoong-Wei Meijer, Lisethe Front Pediatr Pediatrics Optic pathway and hypothalamic glioma (OPHG) are low-grade brain tumors that arise from any part of the visual pathways frequently involving the hypothalamus. The tumors grow slowly and present with features driven by their precise anatomical site, their age at presentation and the stage of growth and development of the host neural and orbital bony tissues. Up to 50% of optic pathway glioma arise in association with Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), which affects 1 in 3,000 births and is a cancer predisposition syndrome. As low-grade tumors, they almost never transform to malignant glioma yet they can threaten life when they present under two years of age. The main risks are to threaten vision loss by progressive tumor damage to optic pathways; furthermore, invasion of the hypothalamus can lead to diencephalic syndrome in infancy and hypopituitarism later in life. Progressive cognitive and behavioural dysfunction can occur, as part of NF1 syndromic features and in sporadic cases where large bulky tumors compress adjacent structures and disrupt neuro-hypothalamic pathways. Persistently progressive tumors require repeated treatments to attempt to control vision loss, other focal brain injury or endocrine dysfunction. In contrast tumors presenting later in childhood can be seen to spontaneously arrest in growth and subsequently progress after periods of stability. These patterns are influenced by NF status as well as stages of growth and development of host tissues. The past two decades has seen an expansion in our understanding and knowledge of the clinical and scientific features of these tumors, their modes of presentation, the need for careful visual and endocrine assessment. This influences the decision-making surrounding clinical management with surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and most recently, the potential benefit of molecularly targeted drug therapy. This article, based upon the authors' clinical and research experience and the published literature will highlight advances in approach to diagnosis, the established role of vision loss as justification of treatments and the emerging evidence of endocrine and neurological consequences that need to be incorporated into judgements for case selection for therapy or observation. Consideration is given to the current state of biological evidence justifying current trials of new therapies, the genetic studies of the NF1 gene and the potential for new approaches to OPHG detection and treatment. The outstanding health system priorities from the perspective of children, their parents and health system commissioners or insurers are discussed. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-03-24 /pmc/articles/PMC10080591/ /pubmed/37033188 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fped.2023.1038937 Text en © 2023 Walker, Aquilina, Spoudeas, Pilotto, Gan and Meijer. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Pediatrics
Walker, David A.
Aquilina, Kristian
Spoudeas, Helen
Pilotto, Chiara
Gan, Hoong-Wei
Meijer, Lisethe
A new era for optic pathway glioma: A developmental brain tumor with life-long health consequences
title A new era for optic pathway glioma: A developmental brain tumor with life-long health consequences
title_full A new era for optic pathway glioma: A developmental brain tumor with life-long health consequences
title_fullStr A new era for optic pathway glioma: A developmental brain tumor with life-long health consequences
title_full_unstemmed A new era for optic pathway glioma: A developmental brain tumor with life-long health consequences
title_short A new era for optic pathway glioma: A developmental brain tumor with life-long health consequences
title_sort new era for optic pathway glioma: a developmental brain tumor with life-long health consequences
topic Pediatrics
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10080591/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37033188
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fped.2023.1038937
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