A comparison of proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) immunostaining, nucleolar organizer region (AGNOR) staining, and histological grading in gastrointestinal stromal tumours

Abstract

Gastrointestinal stromal tumours are lesions in which it is difficult to predict clinical outcome from the histological appearances. Sixty cases were studied using three different methods of assessing aspects of cellular proliferation; these were (i) immunostaining for proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), (ii) interphase nucleolar organizer region staining (AgNORs), and (iii) a histological grading system based on mitotic counts. Both PCNA immunostaining and AgNOR counts were found to correlate well with histological grading and all three methods independently showed good correlations with survival. This suggests that these proliferation-associated markers may be used as additional features to support histological grading in this relatively uncommon group of tumours.

Multiple mammary tumours in a bitch: analysis of mitotic index, AgNOR count and c-erbB2 expression status: a case report

“…The mitotic index and AgNOR count index was determined following the methods described by Yu et al (1992) and Crocker (1989), respectively. Mitotic figures and AgNOR counts had higher values in the papillary adenocarcinoma and malignant mixed mammary tumour than in the fibrosarcoma (Table 1).…”

Proliferative activity in oral salivary gland tumors: the role of PCNA and AgNOR assessed by a double staining technique

“…Other studies have also noted a lack of correlation between these indices when analyzed separately in other kinds of tumors (28)(29)(30)(31)(32) .The inadequacy of statistical correlations between the PCNA index and AgNOR counts has been attributed to the fact that these methods quantify different aspects of proliferative activity.…”

The Use of Flow Cytometric DNA Ploidy Analysis of Liver Biopsies in Liver Cirrhosis and Hepatocellular Carcinoma

“…However, several studies have correlated the mean AgNOR count with Ki-67, bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU)-labeling indexes (Munakataet al, 1994;Trere et al, 1991), and proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) in mucosaassociated lymphoid tissues and gastrointestinal stromal tumors (Yu et al, 1992). Mikow et al (1993) indicated that mean AgNOR reflects the proliferative activity rather than ploidy.…”