ASSESSMENT OF ARGYROPHILIC NUCLEOLAR ORGANIZER REGION QUANTIFICATION IN BENIGN AND MALIGNANT BONE-TUMORS

Quantification of argyrophilic nucleolar organizer regions has been pr oposed as a technique that may aid in diagnosing and predicting the bi ologic behavior of a variety of neoplasms. A 1-step silver staining te chnique was used to identify and quantify argyrophilic nuclear organiz er regions in a series of 96 bone tumor specimens. Malignant bone tumo rs had a higher mean argyrophilic nuclear organizer region count (3.05 +/- 0.82) than giant cell tumors (1.39 +/- 0.14, p < 0.001) and benig n bone tumors (1.51 +/- 0.42, p ( 0.001). Despite these differences in mean counts, an overlap of argyrophilic nuclear organizer region scor es was observed in some benign and malignant cases. The argyrophilic n uclear organizer region counts of the osteosarcomas were analyzed to d etermine whether they correlated with tumor behavior. The mean argyrop hilic nuclear organizer region count of specimens from patients in who m metastatic disease developed was not significantly different than th at of patients who remained disease free.