diagnostic relevance of agnor in ovarian serous borderline tumors

nucleolar organizer regions are loops a/nuclear dna related to ribosomal dna, and their number in cells is believed to indicate cellular proliferative activity. using_a silver staining methodto visualize thesestructures inparaffin embeddedtissue sections, an attempt was made to determine ifthese agnor counts could be used as a diagnostic toolfor serous borderline tumors of the ovary. ten cases in each group a/benign, borderlineand malignantserous ovarian tumorswereselectedand themean numberofagnorwas determined in all cases. a progressive increase in mean agnorvalues was naedfrom the benign l oup towards the borderlinegroup and further to the carcinomagroupi the differences between the means in. each gr~uwere statistically significant however, there was a high ee of overlap between the values ofthe borderline and . ant groups. theseresults indicatethat agnorcountsmaynot be very useful as a diagnostic tool in an individual case.