Quantitation of intestinal-tissue layers from their histology.

A line-sampling technique was applied to microscopic histology of human peroral small-intestinal biopsies to quantitate the relative proportions of the tissue layers. In healthy individuals the villus epithelium formed 41--46%, the crypt epithelium 20--26%, and the lamina propria 34% of the mucosa. In gluten enteropathy the villus epithelium formed 7%, crypt epithelium 43%, and lamina propria 50% of the mucosa. In individuals suffering from chronic diarrhea with malabsorption, the percentages of the tissue components were intermediate between those of healthy individuals and those with gluten enteropathy. The validity of the technique was tested in male and female rats with different intestinal size. In adjacent segments, the actual weight of the scraped mucosa and that of the underlying tissues correlated very well with their corresponding weights estimated from the microscopic histology, using the line-sampling technique. The intestinal-tissue layers quantitated were the villus epithelium, crypt epithelium, the lamina propria + muscularis mucosae+submucosa, and the muscle+serosal coats.