Study of the argyrophilic nucleolar organizer regions in different types of gastritis and normal gastric mucosa

Routine paraffin embedded sections from 83 specimens of gastric mucosa were stained using Hx and E, colloidal silver, PAS and Giemsa stains. Different morphological types of AgNOR were counted in different types of gastritis and compared with the normal gastric mucosa. The normal gastric mucosa showed most of the AgNORs as the clusters type while, in general, gastritis cases showed AGNORs mostly as the separate dot type with little of the clusters type. The H-Pylori + ve group of gastritis showed statistically significant higher value of separate and total mean AgNOR counts and a lower value of clusters type count when compared with the corresponding count of the control normal gastric mucosa. The group of H-Pylori - ve gastritis failed to show any statistically significant difference in these counts when compared with the control. It, however, showed statistically significant differences in these counts when compared with the corresponding counts in the H-Pylori + ve group. Within the H-Pylori + ve group the cases showing moderate or sever PNL infiltrate showed the highest mean of the separate type and total AgNOR counts. Cases showing mucous depletion came second in this respect. Other cases of H-Pylori + ve Gastritis with metaplasia and glandular atrophy showed statistically significant difference both types as well as total AgNOR counts when compared with the corresponding count of the normal control gastric mucosa. The only exception was the group of H-Pylori + ve gastritis with normal mucous secretion which failed to show statistically significant difference in the total AgNOR count when compared with the normal control. The observation of highest correlation between AgNOR count and the severity of mucous depletion and PNL infiltration suggested particular influence of these changes on the cellular proliferation rate. We concluded that the difference in AgNOR counts between the normal gastric mucosa and that showing chronic H-Pylori + ve gastritis reflects the increased cell proliferation rate in the last group which provide an evidence for the role of H-Pyloi infection in gastric carcinogenesis. The differential response of the two morphological types of AgNOR in gastritis highlights the importance of examining the morphological types of AgNOR separately and encourages further work on pattern recognition of AgNOR and its relation with different other cellular changes

Preliminary report on gastric brush cytology as a screening procedure for gastric cancer

Carcinoma of the oesophagus and stomach in the United Arab Emirates are common diseases and most of the cases who present are late stages with very poor five-year survival rates 216 patients with symptoms referable to the upper GIT were visualised endoscopically; gastroscopic brush smears and biopsies were collected and results of 202 paired histologic and cytologic study were correlated. Cytologic examination increased the detectability of gastric dysplasia from 2% by biopsy alone to 4% by combined biopsy and cytology, and intestinal metaplasia from 5% to 8.4%. The overall cytologic accuracy for diagnosis of malignancy was 80%. Cytologic typing accuracy for malignant cases was 100%. The value of gastric cytology to increase detectability of premalignant changes is emphasized