The immunofluorescence characteristics of the basement membrane in squamous carcinoma of the uterine cervix.

Basement membrane-specific antigens (BMSA) were found by immunofluorescence (IFL) in 20 of 33 tumour samples from patients with squamous carcinoma of the uterine cervix. The BMSA were demonstrated to be unrelated to condensation of both reticulin and subepithelial ground substance (as evidenced by antireticulin IFL antibodies, silver stain and PAS reaction, respectively), the age of the patient, the clinical stage and the histological differentiation of the tumour. The finding that BMSA secreting and non-secreting cervical tumours does not correlate with the degree of differentiation, was somewhat unexpected.