Proliferative abnormalities of the oesophageal epithelium of chinese populations at high and low risk for oesophageal cancer

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Abstract
Studies on the pattern of proliferative of epithelial cells from the esophagus of 33 individuals from Linxian, a high-risk area for esophageal cancer in China, and of 22 subjects from Jiaoxian, a low-risk area for the same cancer in China, were performed using thymidine labeling. Esophageal biopsies were obtained during endoscopic surveys carried out in these 2 populations. A clear difference was observed between the 2 groups; the high-risk group showed cell proliferation in the upper layers of the epithelium more often than the low-risk group. No difference was found in the cell proliferation patterns of subjects with esophagitis and those without esophagitis in the high-risk area. This finding could suggest that the tritiated thymidine assay may be a more sensitive method to characterize the precancerous lesions of the esophagus in high-risk and low-risk populations than simple histological evaluation.