Abstract

Practically every organ is supplied by lymphatic and blood vessels but the presence of these vessels at histologic levels is elusive, even using immunohistochemical staining. Majority of immunohistochemical studies had been performed with the routinely formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded tissue sections. We performed immunochemical staining for lymphatic and blood vessels with frozen sections using LYVE-1 for lymphatic vessels and von Willebrand factor (F-8) for blood vessels. We studied several normal tissues of non-human primate, rhesus monkey, including spleen, lymph node, intestines, diaphragm, liver, pancreas, thyroid, ovary, prostate and kidney. Immunostained splenic sinusoids supported that the sinusoids were lymphoreticular and blood vessels in structure and function. Lymphatic sinusoids were immunostained for LYVE-1 only while hepatic sinusoids were also positive for LYVE-1 only, not positive for F-8. Lymphatic and blood vessels were superiorly immunostained with frozen sections than with paraffin-embedded sections. Thus, frozen section immunohistochemical staining will depict not only lymphatic and blood vessels but even nerve fibers and more, which had not been thoroughly studied with formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded sections.

Keywords: Blood vessels, immunohistochemistry, frozen sections, lymphatic vessels, LYVE-1