Oncotarget

Research Papers:

Morphometric evaluation of goblet cells in Barrett’s esophagus at different segment lengths

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DOI pending

Ksenia S. Maslyonkina1, Mikhail Y. Sinelnikov1,2 and Lyudmila M. Mikhaleva1

1 Laboratory of Clinical Morphology, Research Institute of Human Morphology, Moscow, Russia

2 Department of Human Anatomy, Sechenov University, Moscow, Russia

Correspondence to:

Mikhail Y. Sinelnikov, email: [email protected]

Keywords: Barret's esophagus; morphometric evaluation; prognostic factors; esophageal metaplasia

Received: December 09, 2021     Accepted: January 17, 2022     Published: PUBLISHED_DATE

Copyright: © 2022 Maslyonkina et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

ABSTRACT

Background: Goblet cells (GC) are modified epithelial cells that are normally present in intestinal mucosa. Their appearance in esophageal epithelium is characteristic of Barrett’s esophagus (BE). The morphometric characteristics of GC in esophageal tissue at different distances from the gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) may provide valuable diagnostic and prognostic insight.

Materials and methods: We evaluated 139 biopsy samples of consecutive patients with gastroesophageal reflux segment of metaplasia of any length using pathohistological methods, immunohistochemistry, and PAS staining in order to evaluate the morphometric GC characteristics and dysplasia grade.

Results: The increase of segment length showed direct association with an increase in the frequency of GC detection. Our results demonstrate a consistent positive correlation of morphometric parameters (total number, density and percentage of crypts containing GC) and length of non-dysplastic BE segment; the absence of correlation of these parameters and segment length are found in dysplastic BE. Our results demonstrate that GC density is associated with morphological type of dysplasia: foveolar dysplasia is developed in absence or few GC, while intestinal type dysplasia was observed in patients with low and high density of GC.

Conclusions: GC count can serve as a valuable diagnostic and prognostic marker in evaluation of BE dynamics.