Variations in Feulgen stainability of epithelial parenchymal cells extracted from paraffin-embedded salivary gland specimens.

The variations of Feulgen stainability of cells extracted from paraffin-embedded archival specimens for DNA assessment by means of image cytometry (ICM) were investigated in normal salivary gland parenchyma. The Feulgen stainability of the deparaffinized, rehydrated, and disaggregated preparations was found to exhibit variations of up to 300%, expressed by the mean of integrated optical density (IOD), when a routine procedure was applied to a first series of Cytospin preparations of disaggregated specimens. When measured in nondisaggregated tissue sections, only negligible variations were observed. After minimization of the mechanical strains to the cellular material in the Cytospin preparations in a second series, the variations in Feulgen stainability were found to be considerably lower. The findings indicate that the main reason for variations in the Feulgen stainability of extracted cells is, most likely, the disaggregation procedure itself. Factors such as initial treatment of the specimens, duration and kind of formalin fixation, and length of storage time periods seem to be of minor importance. Retrospective studies on paraffin-embedded specimens require a carefully controlled tissue type-adapted disaggregation procedure. In addition, we concluded that the interpretation of histograms, obtained by means of ICM DNA assessments in Cytospin preparations of archival material, requires a well-defined internal specific standard.