Ultrastructural morphometric analysis of human mast cells in normal skin and pathological cutaneous lesions

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Abstract
Electron micrographs of human mast cells in normal neonatal and adult skin and in cutaneous lesions of basal cell carcinoma (BCC), hemangioma and mastocytosis were assessed by morphometric analysis. Using this quantitative histologic approach, adult skin mast cells were found to be significantly larger (47.7 .mu.m2 .+-. 2.4 SEM vs. 38.3 .mu.m2 .+-. 1.8 SEM, p .ltoreq. 0.001) and have larger granules (0.63 .mu.m .+-. .02 SEM vs. 0.53 .mu.m .+-. .02 SEM, p .ltoreq. 0.001) than infant mast cells while both mast cell populations had comparable nuclear sizes (13.7 .mu.m2 .+-. 0.9 SEM vs. 14.3 .mu.m2 .+-. 0.8 SEM) and numbers of cytoplasmic granules (72 .+-. 4.0 SEM vs. 66 .+-. 4.0 SEM). Morphometric analysis of mast cell infiltrates in the adult skin lesions of BCC and hemangioma revealed that these cells were larger than neonatal mast cells but were similar to normal adult controls. Cutaneous mast cells from 2 mastocytosis patients, however, had significantly larger mean cell surface areas (78.0 .mu.m2 .+-. 3.4 SEM and 70.6 .mu.m2 .+-. 3.2 SEM, p .ltoreq. 0.001), nuclear areas (20.8 .mu.m2 .+-. 1.1 SEM and 21.3 .mu.m2 1.2 SEM, p .ltoreq. 0.001) and granule diameters (0.82 .mu.m .+-. 0.4 SEM and 0.83 .mu.m .+-. .03 SEM, p .ltoreq. 0.001) when compared with mast cells in normal adult skin and in the other pathologic lesions. No difference in the total number of cytoplasmic granules was observed in the different mast cell populations. This study demonstrates that morphometric analysis in combination with electron microscopy provides a valuable and sensitive tool for assessing mast cells in normal and pathologic tissues.