Morphologische Untersuchungen an regionären Lymphknoten bösartiger Geschwülste

Mast cells and fibrosis in compartments of lymph nodes of normal, gnotobiotic, and athymic rats

Reports vary on the amount and distribution of mast cells in lymph nodes. We analysed the mast-cell population in compartments of nodes of diverse sites, from euthymic and athymic animals of various ages. Nodal mast cells were few in young animals, occurring mostly in medullary sinuses. Aging is often accompanied by a moderate increase of nodal mast cells. In compartments of a few nodes of some aged athymic and euthymic animals, the mast cells were greatly increased in the extrafollicular zone overlying medulla directly. In certain cases, this great increase was accompanied by pronounced mast-cell degranulation and by fibrosis in the mast cell-rich extrafollicular zone. It is suggested that the mast cells of medullary sinuses relate to non-immunological events, while those of the lymphoid parenchyma relate to elements that can induce humoral immune responses or are somehow involved in nodal processes of such responses. It is further suggested that an occasional emergence, with aging, of a deficiency of particular humoral immune responses may induce an excessive increase of cortical mast cells, and that activities of the resulting dense mast-cell population contribute to the onset of fibrosis.

Numbers of mast cells in the axillary lymph nodes of breast cancer patients

This retrospective study of surgical specimens from forty-three consecutive patients treated by modified radical mastectomy for carcinoma of the breast shows that those patients surviving for at least sixty months after operation have a significantly greater number of mast cells in their axillary lymph nodes than the nonsurvivors (p less than .001). When expressed as cells/mm2 the survivors are associated with nodal concentrations greater than eleven mast cells per square millimeter while the nonsurvivors haver fewer than eleven mast cells/mm2. The results suggest that the number of nodal mast cells may be a readily quantitated host response of prognostic value in carcinoma of the breast.