Nuclear Sex of Testicular Teratomas

IT has been known since 1954 that the cells of testicular teratomas may show either male or female nuclear sex chromatin or both (Hunter and Lennox, 1954; Theiss, Ashley and Mostofi, 1960). Various explanations have been advanced for this but, as relatively small numbers only have been studied, it was hoped that information useful in deciding between some hypotheses would be gained by determining the nuclear sex of as many teratomas as possible during a review of all testicular tumours seen at The London Hospital from 1926 to 1961 (HopeStone, Blandy and Dayan, 1963). All the tumours arose in apparently normal male patients and the one known example in this Institute of teratogenesis in a case of chromatin positive Klinefelter's syndrome has been excluded from the series (Hunter and Lennox, 1954; Lennox, 1960). As this was a retrospective analysis it was not possible to determine the nuclear sex of the patients by the buccal smear technique but normal tissues in the specimens were always examined to exclude similar cases and in fact none were found.