Infrared microspectroscopic detection of epithelial and stromal growth in the human benign prostatic hyperplasia

Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is one of the most common diseases in elderly men. It describes an overgrowth of the epithelial and fibromuscular tissues in the human prostate, in which both epithelium and stroma continue to proliferate at different rates. There is lack of suitable techniques for direct evaluation of the biophysical structure of molecular constituents and the proliferative changes in the structure of both compartments at the microscopic level. Reflectance Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) microspectroscopy was used to pathologically image and examine the structural changes in the proliferation of epithelial and stromal tissues of human BPH. Two successive thin tissue slices were obtained by cutting the tissue with a microtome: one unstained slice was used for FT-IR spectroscopic analysis and the other stained slice was used for position referencing. The result indicates that the amide I maximum for BPH epithelial tissue was near 1,638 cm(-1) and showed its protein secondary structure by a combination of unordered and beta-sheet structures. However, an intense absorption band of amide I was at 1,630 cm(-1) for stromal BPH tissue due to the predominant beta-sheet structure. The higher peak intensity of several IR bands at 1,337, 1,281, 1,238, 1,206, 1,055, and 1,034 cm(-1), assigned to the C-O stretching mode of collagen, was observed in BPH stromal tissue. This suggests that the obvious collagen will be more enriched in the stroma of BPH tissue.