Steroid Receptors and Giant Cell Tumor of Bone

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Abstract
Jaffe and co-workers defined the specific criteria for the diagnosis of giant cell tumor of bone in 1940. Although giant cells are nearly ubiquitous in bone tumors and tumor-like conditions, giant cell tumor of bone is a unique clinical-radiographic-pathological entity (Fig. 1) which is characterized by (1) female predominance, (2) peak incidence in the third and fourth decades of life, and (3) propensity to involve the long bones in the epiphyseal and metaphyseal location. Pathologically, the major diagnostic criteria include the presence of mononuclear stromal cells which are oval or polygonal, containing round or oval vesicular nuclei. Multinucleated giant cells are scattered approximately uniformly throughout the lesion and the nuclei of these multinucleated giant cells are nearly identical morphologically to the mononuclear stromal cells of the tumor. The tumor shows no evidence of matrix production (Fig. 2). Extensive morphometric, cell culture, and histochemical techniques have been employed in an effort to define the relationship of the mononuclear stromal cells to the multinucleated giant cells of this lesion. These techniques have also been used to speculate regarding the cell of origin of the lesion.