title: [Angiogenesis in squamous precancerous cervical lesions].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Vascularisation is one of basic tumor's characteristics. Neoangiogenesis starts at the stage of the dysplastic epithelial changes, thus before the progression into invasive lesion. This study was designed to determine the relation between stromal angiogenesis and the grade of cervical intraepithelial changes (CIN).
  
  
  METHODS
  The tissue sections of 50 cone biopsies were immunohistochemically stained for CD31 antigen, a marker for endothelial cells. All microvessels along the basement membrane subtending dysplastic epithelium were counted. The mean microvessel count was calculated from the three separate fields for each specimen. All the cases were devided into four groups: normal cervical epithelium (n = 5), CIN1 (n = 7), CIN2 (n = 13), and CIN3 (n = 25).
  
  
  RESULTS
  The mean microvessel count (MVC) under the dysplastic epithelium was 18.1. For the patients with CIN1 changes the mean MVC was 12.9, while this number was 18.72 and 19.24 for the patients with CIN2 and CIN3 grade of epithelial changes, respectively. In a subset of the high grade lesions vascular structures were also noted in the upper layer of the epithelium. The mean MVC in the cases with the presence of these structures was 22, while this number was 12.91 in the cases without intraepithelial vessels. Althoug we found an increase of the mean MVC with the increase of the CIN grade, statisticaly significant differences were found out between CIN1 and CIN3 lesions. The mean MVC of the patients with the presence of intraepithelial vessels was statisticaly higher than the mean MVC of the patients without these structures.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  On the basis of the obtained results, we can conclude that the mean MVC and CIN grade positively correlated, while the number of cases with intraepithelial vessels increased with the CIN grade.
authors.affiliation: Institut za plućne bolesti i tuberkulozu, Sremska Kamenica.
authors.forename: Milan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Panjković
authors.forename: Tatjana
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ivković-Kapicl
mesh_terms: D004730:Endothelium, Vascular / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009389:Neovascularization, Pathologic / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology*; D019408:Platelet Endothelial Cell Adhesion Molecule-1 / Q000032:analysis; D011230:Precancerous Conditions / Q000737:chemistry / Q000473:pathology*; D002583:Uterine Cervical Neoplasms / Q000737:chemistry / Q000473:pathology*; D002578:Uterine Cervical Dysplasia / Q000737:chemistry / Q000473:pathology*
chemical_list: D019408:Platelet Endothelial Cell Adhesion Molecule-1