Retinal reactive astrocytic tumor

Abstract

Retinal vasoproliferative tumor is a benign tumor with glial cell and vascular components.1,2 The clinical picture was well characterized by Shields and colleagues.1,3 Histopathologically, the low-grade tumor is composed of glial fibrillary acidic protein–positive spindle cells and vascular channels.4 A recent study demonstrated that the main component of the lesion was reactive astrocytes and suggested renaming the lesion retinal reactive astrocytic tumor.4 The authors questioned whether Müller cells, the major retinal glia, were involved in the reactive lesions. In this study, we examined the pathologic features and gene expression profile of an excised vasoproliferative tumor and confirmed the expression of 2 important overexpressed and underexpressed genes.