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A combined ultrastructural and morphometric image analysis study was carried out on the nuclear profiles of follicular center and mantle zone lymphocytes of six cases of reactive hyperplasia in human lymph node biopsies. For accuracy of morphological observations and sampling at low magnifications, sections were mounted on formvar-covered slot grids. Measurements of nuclear profile features of small (untransformed) lymphocytes in mantle zones served as the standard for a supposed unimodal population in each case. Analysis of nuclear profile area values indicated that during lymphocyte transformation in follicular centers nuclei had a gradual and progressive increase in size and that the sampled nuclear profiles in both the mantle zone and follicular center were unimodal. Lymphocyte nuclear shape (contour index) was a more complex, and likely biologically independent, feature than nuclear area in both the mantle zone and follicular center. Nuclear profile contour indexes of mantle zone lymphocytes were more irregular than suspected and in some cases had mean values greater than those of follicular center lymphocytes. Furthermore, the frequency distribution of nuclear contour index was not normally distributed in either the follicular center or mantle zone due to the presence of a small proportion of highly irregularly shaped nuclear profiles in both sites. The results indicated that some premises of existing concepts of follicular center cells and the process of lymphocyte transformation in follicular centers were incorrect and should not be directly extrapolated to the nuclear profile characteristics in non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

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