Basic and 'special' stains for plastic sections in bone marrow histopathology, with special reference to May-Grünwald Giemsa and enzyme histochemistry

Abstract

A battery of morphological, histochemical, and enzyme histochemical stains have been experimented on semithin sections of glycol-methacrylate-embedded bone marrow biopsies. We have been able to reproduce on sections the typical 'Romanowsky effect' which characterizes May-Grünwald Giemsa-stained smears of bone marrow or peripheral blood. This appears to be of critical importance for proper routine morphological evaluation of bone marrow biopsies. Conventional histochemical stains, and the enzyme histochemistry reactions that are most useful and widely used in the study of marrow aspiration smears have been successfully applied to plastic sections: in this way the evaluation of the cytochemical profiles of marrow diseases, especially leukemias, may be included in the histopathologist's diagnostic approach, with the additional advantage of preserving the architecture of the tissue and the relationship between haemapoietic cells and stromal components.