Ultrastructural study of micro-blood vessels in human brain tumors and peritumoral tissue

Summary

Ultrastructural and tracer studies have demonstrated that vasogenic edema, a serious complication of brain tumor is the result of increased permeability of tumor vessels. However, not much information is available on the alterations in the vessels in the peritumoral areas. Therefore, we studied the ultrastructural changes in the tumor micro-blood vessels (MBVs) in 20 cases of glioma and compared these with the changes in the peritumoral MBVs in 10 of these cases.

The tumor MBVs showed remarkable structural changes, viz, increase in pinocytotic vesicles, large vacuoles and microvilli in the endothelial cells, varying degrees of endothelial attenuation and fenestration, an occasional partially or completely opened-up junction and some pale and edematous endothelial cells, which can adequately explain their increased permeability.

The peritumoral MBVs also showed evidence of increased permeability in the form of increased pinocytotic vesicles, large vacuoles and microvilli associated with pale and edematous cytoplasm of some endothelial cells. Thickened multilayered basement membrane, absence of ensheathment of capillary basement membrane by astrocytic cell processes and widened perivascular space were observed in both tumoral and peritumoral MBVs.

An interesting observation was that in the peritumoral MBVs, the pinocytotic vesicles were most conspicuously seen on the abluminal side of the endothelial cells often fused with the abluminal plasma membrane. Although a static study like this cannot indicate any definite direction of movement of fluid, we feel that the occurrence of reverse pinocytosis is a distinct possibility in the peritumoral MBVs and that it may be an important means of resorption of edema fluid.