Biasco G, Paganelli G M, Miglioli M, Barbara L
Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Bologna, Italy.
J Cell Biochem Suppl. 1992;16G:73-8. doi: 10.1002/jcb.240501114.
Measurements of epithelial cell proliferation in the mucosa of the gastrointestinal tract pointed out the existence of cell kinetic abnormalities which can be involved in the first steps of carcinogenesis. In particular, an increase in the cell proliferation rate and an abnormal distribution of proliferating cells were found both in animals exposed to carcinogens and in human subjects at high risk of gastrointestinal cancer. In some diseases which predispose to cancer (i.e., chronic atropic gastritis, hereditary gastrointestinal cancer, sporadic colorectal neoplasia, chronic ulcerative colitis) we observed an expansion of the proliferative compartment even when the mucosa was not affected by morphological abnormalities. This proliferative feature seems to be associated with the presence of defects in cell differentiation. The abnormality is well detected by the histological examination of the proliferative pattern using microautoradiography after incorporation of tritiated thymidine, or using immunohistochemistry after bromodeoxyuridine uptake. The literature, and our own results, indicate that the search for abnormalities of epithelial cell proliferation can be useful in studying the earliest mechanisms leading to gastrointestinal cancer, in detecting subjects at high cancer risk, and for pilot chemoprevention studies using these abnormalities as intermediate biomarkers of gastrointestinal cancer risk.
对胃肠道黏膜上皮细胞增殖的测量表明存在细胞动力学异常，这些异常可能参与致癌作用的起始步骤。特别是，在接触致癌物的动物和患胃肠道癌高风险的人类受试者中，均发现细胞增殖速率增加以及增殖细胞分布异常。在一些易患癌症的疾病（如慢性萎缩性胃炎、遗传性胃肠道癌、散发性结直肠肿瘤、慢性溃疡性结肠炎）中，即便黏膜未受形态学异常影响，我们仍观察到增殖区的扩大。这种增殖特征似乎与细胞分化缺陷的存在有关。通过在掺入氚标记胸腺嘧啶核苷后使用微放射自显影术对增殖模式进行组织学检查，或在摄取溴脱氧尿苷后使用免疫组织化学方法，可很好地检测到这种异常。文献以及我们自己的结果表明，寻找上皮细胞增殖异常在研究导致胃肠道癌的最早机制、检测癌症高风险受试者以及开展将这些异常作为胃肠道癌风险中间生物标志物的初步化学预防研究方面可能有用。
