Presence of ferruginous bodies in cancerous pulmonary tissue

: The correlation between high counts of ferruginous bodies (FB) and pulmonary cancer was investigated. Autopsy cases between 1982 and 1988 were chosen, and studied at Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Respiratorias. Two grams of lung tissue were digested with sodium hypochlorite. We found no differences in the histologic types of cancer: 18.0 FB per gram (FB/g) for the adenocarcinoma group and 16.0 FB/g for both the epidermoid and anaplastic groups. The asbestos core was predominant in all FB analysed (greater than 85%). Males, Mexico city residents and smokers showed to higher amounts of FB. We concluded that there is an environmental exposure to particles in the cases studied.