Me. Boon et al., MICROWAVE-STIMULATED JONES-MARRES METHOD FOR STAINING FUNGI IN BRAIN-TISSUE OF IMMUNOCOMPROMISED PATIENTS, Methods (San Diego, Calif., Print), 15(2), 1998, pp. 141-149
Life-threatening fungal infections have increased significantly in the
past decade due to the rising number of immunocompromised patients, S
erological diagnosis of most fungal infections is unreliable and blood
cultures are positive in only 50% of premortem cases; therefore, tiss
ue sampling together with fast, reliable staining of fungi should be c
arried out to reach the correct, timely diagnosis. We developed, partl
y serendipitously, a microwave silver staining method for fungi in his
tological sections, During a differentiation step in periodic acid, ba
ckground staining is removed. This rapid staining method can be combin
ed with immunostaining, for example, the cu smooth muscle actin method
, to visualize blood vessels. Silver staining results were optimized u
sing the recently developed MicroMED BASIC microwave labstation for hi
stology (Milestone sri, Italy), featuring no-touch temperature measure
ments and PC control. (C) 1998 Academic Press.