Research Article

The Natural History of Uterine Leiomyomas: Morphometric Concordance with Concepts of Interstitial Ischemia and Inanosis

Figure 3

Fibroid phases: comparison of PCNA staining. (a) In this panel, a representative image of PCNA immunostaining from a fibroid in each of the four phases is shown. The percentage of PCNA positive nuclei in areas of maximum staining within the 4 fibroids in this panel was 59.1, 25.3, 19.1, and 15.5 for phases 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. A few PCNA positive nuclei are present in the phase 4 photo, but these are less intensely stained and thus less obvious than those in the other phases. All images were taken with the 20x objective. (b) Bar graph of Mean PCNAs from each phase. Although there was significant variation of PCNA scores within each phase of tumors in this study, as noted in Table 1, the mean scores of each phase declined progressively from phase 1 to phase 4. There were 5 samples per phase group and the values represent the mean ± SEM. Significantly different from phase 1 ( ).
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