Characteristics of bronchial mucosal inflammatory response in sites of basal cell hyperplasia and squamous cell metaplasia combined with squamous cell lung cancer

The study included 63 patients operated on for squamous cell lung cancer. Tissue fragments of the removed lung with the bronchus at a distance of 4–5 cm from the tumor were the material for histological examination. In order to evaluate the characteristics of the inflammatory response in different variants of degeneration, the presence of cells expressing Ki67, p53, bcl-2, CD138, CD117, CD68 and CD79α in the infiltrate of each variant of the degenerative changes was studied. The inflammatory cell infiltrate in squamous cell metaplasia was characterized by the presence of large number of proliferative cells and cells expressing p53 and bcl-2. In this case, intensity of stromal infiltration by plasma cells, mast cells and macrophages was decreased. Basal cell hyperplasia in the presence of squamous cell metaplasia was characterized by a large number of proliferative cells and leukocytes expressing p53 and bcl-2, large number of plasma cells and by the decrease in the number of macrophages. The character of inflammatory response in squamous cell metaplasia was the same and depended no on the fact whether squamous cell metaplasia was combined with basal cell hyperplasia and neoplasia or not. More pronounced infiltration in sites of squamous cell metaplasia by CD68+ macrophages in case of its combination with neoplasia was the only exception