Patterns of Urothelial Tumors of the Urinary Bladder in Water Buffaloes

Copyright © 2013 Paola Maiolino et al.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Microscopic patterns of thirty-four urothelial tumors of the urinary bladder of water buffaloes from the Marmara and Black Sea Regions of Turkey are here described. All the animals grazed on lands rich in bracken fern. Histological diagnosis was assessed using morphological parameters recently suggested for the urinary bladder tumors of cattle. Papillary carcinoma was the most common neoplastic lesion (22/34) observed in this study, and low-grade carcinomawasmore common (seventeen cases) than high-grade car-cinoma (five cases). Papilloma, papillary urothelial neoplasm of lowmalignant potential (PUNLMP), and invasive carcinomas were less frequently seen. Carcinoma in situ (CIS) was often detected associated with some papillary and invasive carcinomas. De novo (primary) CIS was rare representing 3 % of tumors of this series. A peculiar feature of the most urothelial tumors was the presence in the tumor stroma of immune cells anatomically organized in tertiary lymphoid organs (TLOs). Bovine papillomavirus type-2 (PV-2) E5 oncoprotein was detected by molecular and immunohistochemistry procedures. Early protein, E2, and late protein, L1