EVALUATION OF SEROUS EFFUSIONS USING AgNOR COUNT- A STUDY IN A TERTIARY CARE CENTRE OF SAHARANPUR

Abnormalities of nucleolar morphology are constant features of cancer cells. The importance of the nucleolus for the diagnosis of malignancy has been reconsidered after the observation that structural and morphological reorganisation is a consequence of the redistribution of the fibrillar components within the nucleolus. The nucleolar fibrillar components (fibrillar centre and associated dense fibrillar component) are the sites where ribosomal genes are located during interphase. They therefore represent the interphase counterpart of metaphase Nucleolar Organizer Regions (NOR's). The use of this parameter relative to interphase, NOR distribution has become of great importance after the finding that interphasic NOR's can be clearly visualised at the light microscopic level using a silver reaction, which stains the acidic proteins of the NOR's (AgNOR Proteins) on routinely prepared histo-and cytological samples. By means of this technique, silver-stained interphasic NOR's has been used for the diagnosis of malignancy of numerous neoplastic lesions. Cancer cells in fact have a greater number of silver-stained NOR's than the corresponding benign cells. The diagnosis of malignancy in cytologic preparations of pleural and peritoneal effusions is not always easily performed. Interest therefore has focussed on identifying reliable methods of supplementing conventional cytological methods to differentiate malignant cells from benign cells. Recently, AgNOR's (Silver Staining of Nucleolar Organizer Regions) have come to limelight. NOR's are being increasingly used in diagnosing a variety of tumours.