Oral cornification in anaemic patients.

Changes in the oral epithelium in irondeficiency anaemia have long been recognized, and the clinical picture of glossitis and stomatitis, sometimes in association with dysphagia, is especially familiar in women with "idiopathic" hypochromic anaemia (Paterson, 1919). Waldenstrom (1938) has shown that these changes may occur in cases of occult iron deficiency in which anaemia has not yet developed. Despite wide appreciation of the oral symptoms little investigation of the epithelium itself in this condition has been carried out. The normal buccal epithelium has been previously investigated by means of smears fixed and stained by Papanicolaou's technique (Jacobs, 1958). The present investigation is concerned with the buccal cornification in patients with anaemia due to iron deficiency and other causes.