Correlative light and immunohistological study of the basement membrane of the human squamous cervical carcinoma.

Immunofluorescent reaction with the use of bullous pemphigoid patients' sera including antibodies to the basement membrane, was applied to the frozen sections of 31 cervical carcinomas. These include 3 in situ carcinomas, 1 microinvasion, and 27 invasive squamous cell carcinomas. We found the essentially normal immunofluorescent basement membrane in all cases of in situ carcinomas and in 7 cases of invasive carcinomas, and poorly formed or absent basement membrane in the remaining 20 cases. We couldn't correlate the presence or absence of basement membrane to any histological characteristics, i.e., CPL classification, histological degree of cancer cell differentiation, lymphocyte infiltration, lymph node metastasis and mucin production in cancer cells. The basement membranes shown by PAS staining were not compatible with immunofluorescent one. This means that the diagnosis of the destruction of basement membranes may not be clear by PAS staining. However, we do not know the conventional methods to stain the basement membrane, except for the immunofluorescent technic.