CYTOGENETIC STUDIES IN VENOUS TISSUE FROM PATIENTS WITH VARICOSE-VEINS

Cytogenetic investigation of primary cell cultures from fragments of v aricose veins of seven patients with familial varicosity and seven pat ients with the sporadic type revealed the presence of metaphases with structural abnormalities, clonal trisomies of chromosomes 7, 12, and 1 8, and monosomy of chromosome 14 only in cases with the familial type, while the sporadic cases had no similar chromosome aberrations. The i mmunophenotypical results are consistent with fibroblast lineage of th e cultured cells. These results suggest that karyotypic variations in familial varicose vein tissue cultures could in some way be associated either with the genotypic constitution responsible for the familial t ype or a longer duration of disease on overage than those with sporadi c varicosities.