respiratory nasal mucosa in addicts sniffing heroin: a histological and ultrastructural study

This study was carried out on ten male addicts admitted in the Psychiatry Department of the Hadara University Hospital aged from 30- 50 years and they were sniffing heroin for more than five years, control nasal biopsies were taken from ten volunteers with matched age, and sex. The nasal biopsies were subjected to histological study using H and E stain and ultrastructural study using the transmission electron microscope. Statistical analysis of the morphological grading of the nasal mucosa was done using the t- test and the coefficient correlation test. Histologically, most of the cases of heroin sniffing addiction showed squamous metaplasia with budding of the epithelium into the lamina propria. Variable degrees of degeneration of the epithelial cells and decrease in the total number of the tunical glands with predominance of the mucous acini. Statistically, a highly significant difference was found between the addicts and the control group. Ultrastructurally, the metaplastic epithelial cells were greatly separated from each other. The mucous glands were hyperactive producing different ultrastructural types of mucous granules. The blood vessels showed hypertrophy of their endothelial cells and the lamina propria showed cellular infiltration by fibroblasts, macrophages and foreign body giant cells