Morphometric evaluation of nucleolar organizer regions in cervical intraepithelial neoplasia

The objective of this study was to determine whether some morphometric parameters and two different methods of counting AgNOR dots were correlated with the grade of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. Thirty uterine cervix biopsies (8 cases of cervicitis, 9 CIN I, CIN II and 6 CIN III) were studied. Two methods were used to count AgNOR dots. The first one consisted of counting the number of epithelial cells with 1, 2, 3, 4, or more dots. The second method, based on a computer analysis system, consisted of counting the total number of dots in 100 cells, without considering the number of dots per cell. Using the same computer analysis system, the following parameters were measured: area, diameter, perimeter, roundness and length of each dot. The following parameters were found to be correlated with the grade of intraepithelial neoplasia: 1) number of cells with 1 dot, which decreased with increasing grade of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia; 2) number of cells with 4 dots or more, which increased with increasing grade of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia; 3) total number of dots per 100 cells, which progressively increased with increasing grade of intraepithelial neoplasia. We conclude that counting cells with 4 or more dots is the more trustworthy parameter for distinguishing the grade of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia.