Sterological quantitative study of ultrastructure on morphological development of nasopharyngeal carcinoma

AIM To study the law of morphological changes during pathological development of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. METHODS Normal nasopharyngeal epithelia, para cancerous nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) epithelia and tissue of nasopharyngeal carcinoma cell's were taken as studyingsamples. The morphological changes of above three epithelial cell's nuclei were measured by means of stereological methods at electronic microscopical levels. Vvn, Svn, Nvn, Vve, vn and sn were calculated. RESULTS All above parameters were trended to increase from normal to epithelioma and the differences are significant among three groups, which indicated that during the development of NPC there existed a developing model from normal nasopharyngeal epithelia→atypical metaplastic/proliferating epithelia process→epithelia carcinoma. CONCLUSION The Atypical metaplastic/proliferating epithelia should be taken as precancerous lesion that can result in nasopharyngeal carcinoma.