Studies on Cytological Diagnosis with Staining of Acidic Nucleoproteins and its Application to Human Gastric Cells

Abstract

Since the staining method of the human gastric and blood cells described by Smetana and Busch revealed the drastic changes of the cells during the procedure, the method of fixation was modified as follows: The smears were prefixed in vapor of formalin for 10 min, and postfixed with 10% neutral formalin in saline for 1-3 hr. After the fixation the smears were stained following the procedure described by Smetana and Busch. The modified method showed the satisfactory results to maintain the natural structure of the cells comparing with the original method. With this modified method, it was attempted to detect the morphological localization of acidic nuclear proteins in the cellular structures of resting and dividing cells of human gastric cells. It was revealed that the cytoplasm, the region of nuclear membrane, interchromatinic areas and nucleolus were stained, but chromosomes of the cells in the dividing phase were not stained.
Human gastric cells were examined with the modified method. Materials were as follows: The smears of gastric cells were prepared from small specimens obtained by biopsy from 12 subjects with normal mucosa, 12 atrophic gastritis, 12 gastric ulcer, 9 gastric polyp and 17 gastric cancer that were consisted of, 7 well-differentiated adenocarcinoma, 7 carcinoma simplex and 3 adenocarcinoma mucocellulare. Diagnosis of the specimens was histologically comfirmed. And 30 cells from each specimens were examined and results were as follows:
1) Cytoplasm of gastric cancer cells and ulcer rand cells were stained slightly more intensively than that of others.
2) Nucleoplasm of gastric carcinoma cells were characterized by the increased number of granules with small and various size.
3) Nuclear size larger than 20 μ. was found frequently in well-differentiated adenocarcarcinoma cells.
4) The nucleo-cytoplasmic ratio larger than 0.8 was valuable for the diagnosis of the gastric cancer.
Thus, the modified method staining especially interchromatinic areas proved to be useful for the clinical cytodiagnosis of gastic cancer.