Background: Based on results from evaluation of tissue sections from premalignant lesions of the uterine cervix, the authors examined the hypothesis that immunostaining of Papanicolaou-stained cytologic smears with monoclonal antibodies to keratins 8 and 17 allows detection of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) with progressive potential. They also investigated whether detection of these two keratin subtypes could be of help in the analysis of normal and/or poor quality cytology smears.
Methods: Sixty-one Papanicolaou-stained smears, representing 25 normal smears, 8 CIN 1, 7 CIN 2, 18 CIN 3, and 3 cervical carcinomas, were stained with CAM 5.