Argyrophilic nucleolar organizer regions as a prognostic indicator of laryngeal carcinomas

Ciliary ultrastructure in experimental sinusitis

Ultrastructure of respiratory cilia was observed in experimental sinusitis of rabbit maxillary sinuses. Sinus mucosa of 15 rabbits was inoculated with Streptococcus pneumonia bacteria and of 16 rabbits with Bacteroides fragilis bacteria. Specimens were taken during 12 weeks' observation time and they were studied by transmission electron microscopy from the cross-sections. A special emphasis was paid to the number of cilia, the ciliary orientation, the tubular anomalies, the presence of dynein arms and the compound cilia. It seems likely that pneumococcal sinusitis is a more toxic infection to the epithelium causing loss of ciliated cells and cilia than B. fragilis infection. In anaerobic infection ciliary ultrastructure remains normal and dynein arms as well as normal tubular ultrastructure were seen even after 12 weeks' infection.

Nucleolar organizer regions and prognosis in glottic squamous cell carcinoma

BACKGROUND

The quantity of nucleolar organizer regions (AgNORs) appear to be prognostic significant in several tumor types.

METHODS

Sections from 93 routinely processed pretreatment biopsies from patients with glottic carcinomas were stained by silver nitrate and evaluated by two counting methods: (1) the mean number of AgNOR per tumor nucleus (mAgNOR), and (2) the number of tumor nuclei with one, two, three, four, and more than four AgNOR grains. From these figures the percentage of nuclei with one, two or less, three or less, and four or less AgNORs (pAgNOR1, aAgNOR < or = 2 etc) were calculated.

RESULTS

The median mAgNOR was 4.3, and low counts correlated favorably with the disease-free period (p = 0.0433). The median percentages for pAgNORs were 14, 26, 38, and 51 for pAgNor1, PAgNOR < or = 2, pAgNor < or = 3 and pAgNOR, < or = 4 respectively. Values above the medians correlated positively with the disease-free period (p-values ranging from 0.0005 to 0.0001). Although pAgNOR < or = 3 appeared to be the best discriminator by multivariate analysis, pAgNOR1 is the method of choice because this parameter is the easiest and quickest to perform.

CONCLUSION

pAgNOR counts appear to be a potent prognostic marker and may become useful in treatment decisions.

p53 and bcl-2 expression and argyrophilic nucleolar organizer regions in patients with malignant maxillary sinus tumours

To investigate the relation between the clinicopathological findings, and the survival of patients with malignant tumours of the maxillary sinus, and the tumour's biological parameters, we examined the expression of p53 and bcl-2 and the number of silver-stainable nucleolar organizer regions (AgNORs) in 23 paraffin-embedded specimens from primary tumours. Fifteen of 23 (65 per cent) maxillary tumours expressed p53 and two of 23 (nine per cent) tumours expressed the bcl-2 gene product. The mean number of AgNORs per nucleus was 5.2 +/- 2.4. There was no relationship between the expression of p53 or bcl-2 and the patient's clinical course. In contrast, there was a statistically significant difference in the survival of patients with a high (> 6) number of AgNORs and patients with a low (< 6) number of AgNORs. These data suggest that the number of AgNORs may be useful in evaluating the prognosis of patients with malignant maxillary sinus tumours.