Histological, immunohistochemical, and chromosomal studies on non‐adrenal neuroblastomas without increased excretion of catecholamines and their metabolites in urine

Abstract

We reviewed our records for the last 10 years and found three of the 36 patients with neuroblastoma did not excrete significantly increased quantities of catecholamine metabolites in urine. All of these tumors were histologically characterized by small round cells and possessed a few dense core granules on the electron microscopic examination. All of them were reacted with anti-neuron-specific enolase (NSE) antibodies, OKB2, PI153/3 monoclonal antibodies (MoAbs). The HNK-1, BA-1, and SJ-9A4 MoAbs reacted with two out of three. One of them demonstrated a reciprocal translocation involving the short arm deletion of chromosome 1. This multidisciplinary study has been helpful in making more accurate diagnoses for neuroblastoma without classical clinical characters.