title: Papanicolaou smears in pregnancy. Positivity of exfoliated cells for human chorionic gonadotropin and human placental lactogen.
abstract: Trophoblastic cells are seen rarely in cervical exfoliative cytology during normal pregnancy but are thought to occur with increasing frequency in the clinical setting of threatened abortion. We performed a clinicopathologic and immunologic study to determine the significance of multinucleate syncytiotrophoblastic and cytotrophoblastic cells in cervicovaginal smears from 13 women identified by cytomorphologic screening during a six-year period. Control groups included 11 patients who subsequently had spontaneous abortions and 15 patients with uneventful pregnancies. Immunocytochemistry was performed using a cocktail of antihuman chorionic gonadotropin and antihuman placental lactogen antisera. Five of the 13 screen-positive cases, 1 of the 11 spontaneous abortion cases and 0 of the 15 normal pregnancies were positive on immunostaining. Clinical follow-up showed that none of the screen-positive pregnancies, including those also positive on immunostaining, ended in spontaneous abortion. Further, there was no significant difference in fetal weight or Apgar scores between the controls and the screen-positive group. The presence of trophoblastic cells on cervicovaginal smears during pregnancy is not a reliable indicator of impending abortion.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Truman Medical Center, Kansas City, Missouri 64108.
authors.forename: R M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Fiorella
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: P J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Kragel
mesh_terms: D000022:Abortion, Spontaneous; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D006063:Chorionic Gonadotropin / Q000276:immunology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007124:Immunoenzyme Techniques; D065006:Papanicolaou Test; D010928:Placental Lactogen / Q000276:immunology; D011247:Pregnancy; D011256:Pregnancy Outcome; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D014327:Trophoblasts / Q000166:cytology*; D014626:Vaginal Smears
chemical_list: D006063:Chorionic Gonadotropin; D010928:Placental Lactogen