1987 Volume 27 Issue 10 Pages 935-939
Accurate diagnosis of brain tumors is necessary for decisions concerning therapy, determination of prognosis, and evaluation and comparison of therapeutic modalities. The authors attempted to identify difficult tumors and atypical cases of various histological types by means of Sternberger's peroxidase-antiperoxidase (PAP) method, which utilizes primary antibodies to glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFA) and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) in combination with conventional stains. The GFA-PAP method was useful diagnostically, especially for invasive astroglial tumors composed of either abundant mesodermal elements or round or oval cells with no Mallory's phosphotungstic acid hematoxylin-positive glial cell processes. The CEA-PAP stain, which is positive in many different carcinomas, was used in the differential diagnosis of metastatic versus astroglial tumors, namely, an astroglial tumor composed of epithelial-like cells and a metastatic tumor resembling a glioma.
