A Relation Between Cell Cycle and Intestinal Metaplasia in Oesophageal Biopsies Using Optical and Digital Microscopy

Protein expression changes in relation to cell cycles provide important information, and it may represent a new method for an early diagnosis of metaplasia – dysplasia – adenocarcinoma sequence. We investigated potential changes in cell cycle genes such as protooncogenes (PCNA, EGFR), tumour suppressor gene (p53), apoptotic TUNNEL (Tdt mediated dUTP nick and labelling) gene, as well as small intestinal mucus antigen (SIMA) and large intestinal mucus antigen (LIMA), which accumulates in metaplastic epithelium due to the inflammatory process in routine oesophageal biopsies using immunohistochemistry. Oesophageal biopsies were taken from patients with Barrett’s oesophagus ( n = 30), reflux oesophagitis ( n = 30), healthy oesophagus ( n = 30) and healthy cardia ( n = 10). Immunohistochemical signalling was carried out by Streptavidin-Biotin-AEC (aminoetil-carbazol). Expression of PCNA was statistically significantly lower in healthy oesophagus ( p 0.05).