ROLE OF MICRONUCLEI (MN) SCORING AS POTENTIAL MARKER OF GENOTOXICITY IN VARIOUS EPITHELIAL LESIONS-SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON BREAST LESIONS: A DESCRIPTIVE OBSERVATIONAL STUDY

Sahu Indira*, Ruhela Suman, Meel Mukta and Mathur Kusum

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives: Cancer is genomic disease associated with genetic damage accumulation. Majority of solid tumors show large number of chromosomal aberrations. Carcinoma of breast is on rise in our country. Like other cancers even breast carcinomas are known to have chromosomal instabilities that play an important role in cancer development and progression. Aims: 1. To score the spontaneously occurring micronuclei in epithelial lesions of breast, cervix and liver 2. To score and compare micronuclei frequency in benign tumours and various grades of infiltrating ductal carcinomas of breast. Materials and Methods: Cross-sectional Retrospective analysis of breast cytology smears stained with May Grunwald Giemsa stain, received over a period of 1 year formed the basis of the study. Micronucleus scoring was done by counting the number of micronuclei in 1000 epithelial cells under oil immersion and score was calculated in various epithelial lesions and specifically compared these in the fibroadenoma, usual/atypical ductal hyperplasia, and the three grades of infiltrating ductal carcinomas of breast. Statistical Analysis: Descriptive analyses and one-way analysis of variance was used for statistical analysis. Results: Out Of the 478 cases, statistically significant mean micronucleus score of fibroadenoma (152), usual ductal hyperplasia (16), atypical ductal hyperplasia(9), and ductal carcinoma grade I, II, III (83) were 0.36,2.18,5.22,8.83,11.51 and 15.357 respectively. MN score for high grade intra epithelial lesion of cervix(9) was 8.22 and for metastatic liver carcinoma (209) was 5.42. Conclusion: MN scoring on the epithelial cells of breast, cervix and liver could serves as an additional biomarker for the cancer screening, diagnosis and grading of breast lesions. This is an easy, simple, reliable, reproducible & objective test which can be performed on routinely stained May Grunwald Giemsa stain and pap smears.

Keywords: Micronuclei (MN), Genetic, Breast cytology aspirates.