Cytogenetic findings in cervical carcinoma. A statistical approach.

Cytogenetic analysis with banding techniques was attempted in 150 cervical carcinomas, including in situ carcinoma, large cell keratinizing tumors, large cell nonkeratinizing tumors, small cell nonkeratinizing tumors, and adenocarcinomas. Monte Carlo simulations were used to determine which numerical and structural aberrations were nonrandomly involved in the tumorous process and to attempt to correlate specific abnormalities with specific histologic types. Results showed that several chromosomes are nonrandomly involved in cervical carcinomas and that some are more specifically associated with particular histologic subtypes. Therefore, cervical carcinoma appear to include a large spectrum of malignancies, each particular histologic type involving different genes. If some cytogenetic changes may be considered general events related to the carcinogenesis process, other rearrangements are presumably more specific processes arising in more committed stem cells.