Spindle Cell Hemangioma and Decorin Expression

Spindle cell hemangioma (SCH) is a rare benign vascular tumor and we report 2 cases of SCH who are 50-year-old man and 16-year-old girl. A growing amount of evidence indicates that multifunctional ECM molecule decorin regulate endothelial cell-matrix interactions during angiogenesis. Furthermore, a current publication shows that no detectable decorin expression was found in the stromas of tumor nests in Kaposi’s sarcoma or angiosarcoma groups while the expression was clearly observed in the connective tissue stromas within benign vascular tumors. SCH exhibits spindle cell proliferation and resembles Kaposi’s sarcoma. Therefore, this study examined decorin expression in the tissues of our SCH cases by immunohistochemical analysis. The results demonstrated that immunoreactivity of decorin was clearly detectable in the connective tissue stroma within tumor nests. SCH was first perceived as sarcoma because of spindle cell proliferation, but this proliferation was subsequently found to be reactive. The presence of decorin expression in our cases also indicates that SCH have benign properties. Moreover, this study further increases the reliability of examination of decorin expression for differentiation between benign and malignant vascular tumors.