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MINI REVIEW article
Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Pituitary Endocrinology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fendo.2025.1527161
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances and challenges in adult-onset craniopharyngiomaView all articles
A Case-Based Review of Adult-Onset Craniopharyngioma
Provisionally accepted- 1Department of Medicine, Langone Medical Center, New York University, New York City, United States
- 2Department of Endocrinology, Langone Medical Center, New York University, New York City, United States
- 3Department of Pathology, Langone Medical Center, New York University, New York City, United States
- 4Department of Radiology, Langone Medical Center, New York University, New York City, United States
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Craniopharyngiomas are histologically benign central nervous system tumors derived from embryonic epithelial cells of Rathke’s pouch. The disease demonstrates a bimodal age distribution, occurring most often in patients 5-14 and 50-74 years of age. Common comorbidities include hypopituitarism, hypothalamic obesity, sleep apnea, visual impairment and neurocognitive disturbances. There are several key differences in the presentation, tumor characteristics and clinical outcomes between age groups. Childhood craniopharyngiomas are mostly adamantinomatous and often present as larger tumors with worse functional outcomes such as rates of obesity and neurological deficits. Adults experience similar but slightly adjusted rates of comorbidity with both the adamantinomatous and papillary subtypes. This review presents a case-based discussion of adult craniopharyngiomas, focusing on recent literature regarding their presentation, pathology and pathogenesis, diagnosis, treatment and long-term sequelae.
Keywords: Craniopharyngioma, adult craniopharyngioma, Papillary craniopharyngioma (PCP), Adamantinomatous craniopharyngioma, Mini review, literature review, Case-Based
Received: 12 Nov 2024; Accepted: 06 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Meyer, Shah, Dancel-Manning, Wang, Young and Agrawal. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Nidhi Agrawal, Department of Endocrinology, Langone Medical Center, New York University, New York City, United States
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