SMEARS FROM THE FEMALE URETHRA AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO SMEARS OF THE URINARY SEDIMENT

Abstract

IN a previous paper (1) del Castillo, Argonz and Galli Mainini in 1948 reported the results of an investigation on a special aspect of the cytologic content of the urinary sediment in women. From that study we showed that: The cells present in the urinary sediment of women, when this sediment is smeared, fixed and stained with Shorr's technique, are very similar to, but not identical, with the vaginal cells. These cells, contrary to what can be supposed, are not vaginal cells washed out by the urinary stream. In the previous report we showed that they come from somewhere in the epithelium of the urinary tract; and the present report, which confirms our previous findings, deals with the principal sources of the mentioned cells. The cytologic content of the vaginal smear and of the urine sediment, taken simultaneously from the same patient, show a striking similarity: each one undergoes the same morphologic and staining changes in relation to the absence, normal presence, or therapeutic administration of estrogens. It can be said that the urinary sediment cells like the vaginal cells, are susceptible to the estrogenic hormones. This is shown by the fact that the number, size, staining properties and morphologic characteristics of the cells observed in the sediment of the urine of normal adult women are clearly different from those observed in prepuberal girls, in women with advanced and untreated menopause, castrated women and patients with rudimentary ovaries; and also from the cells found in smears obtained from patients treated by implantation of estrogen, in whom the vaginal smears show the typical “full estrogenic” picture. The estrogenic effect on the cells found in urinary sediment has been further confirmed by the daily observation of the reversal of their morphologic and staining properties under different types of estrogenic therapy, in patients proved to be without ovarian function.