There are various opinions regarding actions of mast cell in malignant tumor from enhanced host defense mechanism for cancer to no actions at all for cancer. There are even a theory that mast cell has actually actions to promote malignant tumor growth. This author had carried out this study in order to find out any relationship between mast cell and various gastric conditions, such as chronic superficial gastritis, chronic peptic ulcer, mucosal dysplasia, well differentiated adenocarcinoma, pooly differentiated adenocarcinoma and malignant lymphoma.
The results obtained are as follows:
1. In the gastric mucosal layer, the numbers of mast cells are rare; exhibiting 0-5/20 HPF in chronic superficial gastritis, 5-13/20 HPF in chronic peptic ulcer, and 0/20 HPF in maligant diseases.
2. In the submucosal layer, the numbers of mast cells were greatly increased in chronic superficial gastritis and chronic peptic ulcer. The numbers of mast cells were moderately increased in gastric mucosal dysplasia and markedly decreased in adenocarcinoma and malignant lymphoma.
3. In the muscle layer, mast cells were seen in the only intermuscular connective tissue and markedly increased in chronic peptic ulcer. The mast cells were moderately increased in mucosal dysplasia and poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma. In malignant lymphoma, the mast cells were slightly decreased and in other cases, there was no changes of mast cells.
4. In cases of adenocarcinoma, the mast cells were not seen in the lesions, which were in the mucosal, in the submucosal or in the muscle layer.
We can conclude with the above result that the change in the number of mast cells especially at the submucosa is related to the degree of differentiation of cancer cell.
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