The Accurate Interpretation and Clinical Significance of Morphological Features of Fine Needle Aspiration Cells in Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma.

Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the most common malignant neoplasm of the thyroid gland; fine needle aspiration cytology is the most basic and reliable diagnostic method before PTC operation. However, it is not clear which cell morphological changes can be used as a reliable standard for the diagnosis of PTC. A retrospective analysis was performed on 337 patients with PTC confirmed by postoperative histology. An additional 197 randomly selected patients with benign thyroid lesions were included in the study and used as a control group. True papillary arrangements, swirl arrangements, and escape arrangements had high specificity, all of which were 100%, but only swirl arrangements had ideal sensitivity (77.61%). The nuclear volume characteristics had a high sensitivity of more than 90%, but the specificities of both nuclear crowding and nuclear overlap were too low, only 16.34% and 23.35%. The sensitivities of five nuclear structural characteristics were more than 90%, but only the specificity of intranuclear cytoplasmic pseudoinclusions (INCIs) reached 100%, nuclear contour irregularity and pale nuclei with powdery chromatin also had ideal interpretation value except for grooves and marginally placed micronucleoli. Although the sensitivity of psammoma bodies (PBs) was low, the specificity was 100%. In terms of preparation methods, the method of liquid-based preparation (LBP) is obviously better than that of conventional smears. The diagnostic efficiency by the combined detection method of parallel tests showed that without reducing the specificity, the sensitivity increased with the increase of the number of morphological characteristics and finally reached 98.81%. The INCIs and swirl arrangements are the most common and important indicators for the diagnosis of PTC, whereas papillary-like arrangements, the crowding and overlap of nuclear, grooves, marginally placed micronucleoli, and multinucleated giant cells are of little significance for the diagnosis of PTC.

The Morphological Analysis of Cells in the Bronchoscopic Brushing and TBNA of Patients with Lung Adenocarcinoma.

Biopsy, brushing, and transbronchial needle aspiration (TBNA) are the most common methods for diagnosis of lung adenocarcinoma and are taken during the same diagnostic bronchoscopic procedure. However, it is not clear what the morphological diagnostic criteria of cytology by brushing or TBNA are. A retrospective analysis was performed on 136 patients who underwent video bronchoscopy examination for diagnostic purposes. All the subjects were performed brushing or TBNA and confirmed as lung adenocarcinoma by biopsy or postoperative pathology. An additional 140 randomly selected patients with benign lung diseases were included in the study and used as a control group. The benign cells usually confused with adenocarcinoma cells were ciliated columnar cells, mucous columnar cells, ciliated cuboid cells, and reactive ciliated cells, respectively. The number of cases diagnosed as adenocarcinoma cells, carcinoma cells, suspicious cancer cells, and atypical proliferative cells by cytology was 101, 11, 20, and 4, respectively. The main basis for the interpretation of adenocarcinoma cells is the enlargement of individual nucleus, the arrangements of multistage papillary, and the general enlargement of nuclei, while the main clue for the interpretation of suspicious cancer cells and dysplasia cells comes from escape cells. The results suggested that the degree of nuclear enlargement, multiple papillary arrangement, and escape cells or escape trend cells are important clues for the interpretation of lung adenocarcinoma cells, while the atypical proliferative cells were similar to escape cells or escape trend cells, which were essentially benign cells beside the cancer.

Quantitative proteomic analysis for high-throughput screening of differential glycoproteins in hepatocellular carcinoma serum.

OBJECTIVE: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Novel serum biomarkers are required to increase the sensitivity and specificity of serum screening for early HCC diagnosis. This study employed a quantitative proteomic strategy to analyze the differential expression of serum glycoproteins between HCC and normal control serum samples. METHODS: Lectin affinity chromatography (LAC) was used to enrich glycoproteins from the serum samples. Quantitative mass spectrometric analysis combined with stable isotope dimethyl labeling and 2D liquid chromatography (LC) separations were performed to examine the differential levels of the detected proteins between HCC and control serum samples. Western blot was used to analyze the differential expression levels of the three serum proteins. RESULTS: A total of 2,280 protein groups were identified in the serum samples from HCC patients by using the 2D LC-MS/MS method. Up to 36 proteins were up-regulated in the HCC serum, whereas 19 proteins were down-regulated. Three differential glycoproteins, namely, fibrinogen gamma chain (FGG), FOS-like antigen 2 (FOSL2), and α-1,6-mannosylglycoprotein 6-ß-N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase B (MGAT5B) were validated by Western blot. All these three proteins were up-regulated in the HCC serum samples. CONCLUSION: A quantitative glycoproteomic method was established and proven useful to determine potential novel biomarkers for HCC.