INTERPHASE NUCLEOLAR ORGANIZER REGION DISTRIBUTION IN THE TISSUES OF ORAL LEUKOPLAKIA, ORAL SUBMUCOUS FIBROSIS AND ORAL-CANCER - EVALUATIONOF DIAGNOSTIC AND PROGNOSTIC IMPLICATIONS

The AgNOR technique, was applied to oral tissue sections of 185 oral c ancer, 42 oral leukoplakia, 37 oral submucous fibrosis and 10 normal s ubjects to investigate whether any correlation held good in these diff erent tissues. Compared to the AgNOR counts in normal oral epithelium, there was a gradation in increase in the mean AgNOR counts from oral leukoplakia to oral submucous fibrosis to oral carcinoma (P<0.01). Thi s suggests that AgNOR count parallels with the degree of neoplastic tr ansformation of oral epithelium. Three oral submucous fibrosis patient s who showed very high AgNOR counts as that of oral cancer patients, l ater developed oral carcinoma. Among the oral cancer tissues, the mode rately and poorly differentiated subtypes showed higher AgNOR counts a nd scattered distribution pattern than the well differentiated subtype which showed a clustered distribution pattern. These results suggest that AgNOR technique can be utilised as a diagnostic and prognostic in dicator in premalignant and malignant oral tissues.