The ultrastructure of a diethylstilbestrol-induced heterotopic epithelium and adenosis of the uterine cervix in mice
Abro, A.; Kalland, T.
Cellular and Molecular Biology 28(3): 319-335
1982
ISSN/ISBN: 0145-5680 PMID: 7116370 Document Number: 184936
The pseudostratified columnar Muellerian epithelium of the cervicovaginal anlage in neonatal female mice normally undergoes a transformation into a stratified squamous epithelium. As a target tissue for estrogens, the non-transformed Muellerian epithelium responds in a different way from that of the epithelium in the same region after the transformation and also differs from the uterine epithelium. Neonatal female mice treated with diethylstilbestrol develop from the Muellerian epithelium a persisting heterotopic columnar epithelium in the common cervical canal from where tubulous downgrowths at puberty invade the stroma. The neoplasms merge to adenosis-like formations of deranged epithelia and subjacent altered stromal tissues that expand and finally occupy the whole thickness of the cervical stroma, which becomes chronically inflamed. The lining of heterotopic epithelium morphologically undergoes alterations with advancing age. Treatment with diethylstilbestrol seems to interfere with the maintenance of the assemblage of cytoplasmic components that constitute the cytoskeleton in both heterotopic lining epithelium and the epithelial downgrowths; the cells retain the ability to form the different kinds of cell junctions. Late heterotopic lining epithelium and tubulocystic formations appear devoid of major cytoskeletal features such as the terminal web; the epithelial cells lose the polarity of cytoplasmic organization. The epithelium of tubulous downgrowths proved to be clearly different from the regular epithelium of polarized cells in uterine glands. The epithelia of advanced adenosis underwent epidermoid metaplasia, and stromal neutrophilic granulocytes, previously accumulated near the epithelium infiltrated the piles of immature squamous cells. Cytoskeletal alterations might represent a property of potential importance towards invasive activity of the epithelium.