Glial choristoma of the tongue. Clinico-pathologic analysis of a case and pathogenetic insights.

Glial choristoma of the tongue is a rare developmental anomaly usually occurring in the first two years of life. Although diverse theories have been suggested to explain its development, they do not seem to take into account the normal tongue development. We report here on a glial choristoma of the tongue in a two-month-old male with the aim to describe the clinicopathological features of this lesion and to discuss the pathogenetic role of the cells that normally migrate from the cranial neural crests to generate the ectomesenchymal derivatives of the tongue and express neuroglial differentiation as normal developmental pathway.