Razi Journal of Medical Sciences

Background: Diabetes mellitus is the most common metabolic endocrine diseases that is along with disorder in metabolism of carbohydrate, fat and protein .Usage ofcyto-morphometric method in evaluation of qualitative and quantitative changes in epithelium of oral mucosa remained unknown and few studies have been done in diabetic patients in thisregard. Therefore, the goal of this study is to compare epithelium of oral mucosa in type I and II diabetic patients and healthy people.

Methods: In this case control study, smear cytology from epithelium of oral mucosa (Lateral border of tongue and right side of buccal mucosa) in 24 Patients with diabetes (9 cases type I and 15 cases type II) and 30 healthy people (15 cases control I, and 15 control II) has been prepared and has been stained with papa-Nikolaou method. The average of size of nucleus, cytoplasm and nuclear to cytoplasm ratio in each group has been measured usingMotic Plus2 software. Additionally, qualitative evaluation of cytological slides was done in three groups, diabetic patients type I, II, and healthy people.

Results: There was a decrease in nuclear and cytoplasmic size (p< 0.001) and nuclear to cytoplasmic ratio in buccal mucosa (p= 0.001) and tongue (p=0.011) of diabetic patients compared with the healthy control. No significant statistical difference in quantitative cyto-morphometric features of buccal mucosa (p= 0.15) and tongue (p= 0.86) of diabetic types I and II was found. In the nucleus and cytoplasmic size, there was a statistical significant difference between the patientes with diabetes I and control I and also between diabetes type II and control II groups in the area buccal mucosa and tongue (p< 0.001). Double- or multi-lobed nucleus, karryorhexis, and vacuolization of cytoplasm in diabetic patients were higher than the healthy control (p< 0.001).

Conclusions: Diabetes leads to cyto–morphometric quantitative and qualitative changes in oral mucosa, but type of diabetes does not seem to be effective on these changes.