Abstract
The nebular inclusions (NI), which are characteristic of chlamydial infection, are often overlooked in the routine screening work because of poor morphological characteristics of the inclusions. Which a view to making up for the weak points, morphological analysis of the nuclei of the chlamydia-infected cells were performed to compare with the nuclei of the noninfected cervical cells.
It was confirmed by the immunoperoxidase method (PAP) that all of 461 infected cells collected from the uterine cervices of 30 patients contained the chlamydial inclusions.
The results are as follows:
1) The nuclear diameter and the irregularity of nuclear rim of the infected cells showed intermediate values between those of the noninfected cells and the dyskaryotic cells.
2) The most remarkable nuclar atypia was observed in the tissue repair cells infected with chlamydia, while the atypical nuclei resembling those of the dyskaryotic cells derived from dysplasia were detected in only one case out of 30 cases of chlamydial infection.
These findings suggest that if a lot of atypical metaplastic cells with slightly enlarged nuclei, hyperchromasia and irregular nuclear rim are encountered in screening, the preparation should be examined for NI with the utmost care, because the case is strongly suspected to be chlamydial infection.
