BACKGROUND The 'immersion' technique during upper endoscopy allows the visualization of duodenal villi and the detection of total villous atrophy. AIM To evaluate the accuracy of the immersion technique in detecting total villous atrophy in suspected coeliac patients. The accuracy in diagnosing coeliac disease and the potential cost-sparing of a biopsy-avoiding approach, based on selection of...

The human placenta performs numerous functions during its limited lifespan and its survival is a necessary prerequisite for fetal nutrition, even in unfavourable conditions. BCL-2 is a proto-oncogene implicated in the regulation of cell death and survival without affecting cell proliferation. An extracellular matrix molecule involved in the reparative and degenerative processes in the human pla...

Placenta as an ideal model to study angiogenic mechanisms have been established in previous studies. There are two processes, vasculogenesis and angiogenesis, involved in blood vessel formation during placental development. Therefore, blood vessel formation is a crucial issue that might cause vascular malformations. One of the vascular malformations is cerebral cavernous malformation (CCM) in t...

Human cytomegalovirus (CMV) is the leading cause of prenatal viral infection. Affected infants may suffer intrauterine growth retardation and serious neurologic impairment. Analysis of spontaneously aborted conceptuses shows that CMV infects the placenta before the embryo or fetus. In the human hemochorial placenta, maternal blood directly contacts syncytiotrophoblasts that cover chorionic vill...

Masaharu Fukunaga, M.D. Department of Pathology, the Jikei University Daisan Hospital, Tokyo, Japan Hydatidiform moles With the increased use of ultrasound hydatidiform mole (HM) is being diagnosed at increasingly early stages of gestation. As villous edema is not fully developed, we cannot make a diagnosis of HM by macroscopic observation. Furthermore, microscopically the classic features of c...

Much has been writ’tcn about the motor activities of the intestinal tract. A survey of the literature shows that with a few exceptions these writings have been based upon experiments and observations involving only the outer, the circular and longitudinal muscles of the intestine. Little attention has been given to the activities of the muscularis mucosae. Inasmuch as in all higher animals this...

We present two pregnancies associated with normal live births and the unusual concomitance of chorangioma and placental vascular malformation with mesenchymal hyperplasia. The enlarged placenta had the characteristic findings of chorangioma, dilated and varicose chorionic vessels and multiple vesicle-like villi containing hyaluronic acid. The vesicle-like villi showed diploid cellular DNA conte...

The present study is aimed to investigate changes in caecal wall histology of quails, during prepubertal and pubertal periods. To this end, forty quails at the ages of 10, 20, 30 (prepuberty) and 40 (puberty) days were slaughtered (10 birds in each sampling time) and histological sections from proximal, middle and distal parts of caeca were prepared and stained with H&E. It was observed that in...

The intra-uterine existence of foetus is dependent on placenta, a major organ of nutrition and homeostasis.The present study was carried out to compare morphometric and histological changes in preterm and term human placentas. Eighty placentas collected from Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, JNMCH, AMU, Aligarh, were divided into group first of preterm placentas up to 36 weeks (n =30) an...

Six cases of hydatidiform mole associated with normal chorionic villi and a normal embryo/fetus (in five cases) were investigated with interphase cytogenetic and DNA cytometric analyses for diagnostic purposes. DNA probes specific for the pericentromeric regions of chromosomes 1 and X and for the long arm of chromosome Y were used. In four cases a dizygotic twin pregnancy could be proven. In th...