Microwave Fixation of Whole Fetal Specimens

Abstract

This study compares microwave fixation of whole fetal specimens with conventional techniques performed at room temperature. All fetuses were obtained from the same pregnant rat; half of them were placed in neutral formalin for 15 min at room temperature, then irradiated for 2.5 min in a domestic microwave oven. The remaining fetuses were placed in neutral formalin at room temperature for 48 hr as a control. Both experimental and control groups were exposed to routine tissue processing for light microscopy and embedded in paraffin wax. Sections 5 microns thick were stained with hematoxylin and eosin. Our results showed that the microwave technique reduced the fixation time while providing thin sections that were equal to or better in quality than those in the control group.

Microwave-assisted antigen retrieval and incubation with cox-2 antibody of archival paraffin-embedded human oligodendroglioma and astrocytomas

“…This procedure found wide application and was often modified to accommodate specific requirements of different tissues or histopathological procedures. Today, these procedures are applied in a variety of histological protocols, such as, fixation, tissue processing, histochemical and immunohistochemical staining for light and electron microscopy, antigen retrieval, and molecular biology techniques (Ainley and Ironside, 1994;Cavusoglu et al, 1998;Giberson et al, 2003;Kahveci, 1993;Kahveci et al, 1997aKahveci et al, , 1997bKahveci et al, , 2003Kennedy and Foulis, 1989;Kok et al, 1988;Leong and Milios, 1993;Login and Dvorak, 1988;Minbay et al, 2001;Noyan et al, 2000).…”

“…Microwave irradiation has been used to improve tissue fixation, enhance histopathological staining for light and electron microscopy Giberson et al, 2003;Kahveci et al, 1997aKahveci et al, , 2003Temel et al, 2005) and more recently, to improve immunohistochemical staining (Evers and Uylings, 2000;Waremborg and Leroy, 2000). Advances in microwave technology facilitated the immunohistochemical analysis of normal and diseased tissues and permitted the development of new antigen labeling techniques (Kumada et al, 2004;Muňoz et al, 2004).…”

The Minute Virus of Mice NS2 proteins are not essential for productive infection of embryonic murine cells in utero

“…Embryos were processed for cryosectioning and antibody incubation as described previously (Itah et al, 2004b) but with the addition of an initial 4% PFA, microwave-enhanced fixation (Kahveci et al, 1997) and equilibration in 15% sucrose before freezing.…”

Immunohistochemical detection of p53 protein in basal cell skin cancer after microwave-assisted antigen retrieval

“…In recent years, microwave irradiation has been used extensively in a number of histopathological procedures, such as fixation, histochemical and immunohistochemical staining for light and electron microscopy or antigen retrieval techniques Login and Dvorak 1988;Shi et al 1991;Leong 1993;Kahveci 1993;Ainley and Ironside 1994;Kahveci et al 1997Kahveci et al , 2003Cavusoglu et al 1998;Noyan et al 2000;Cavusoglu et al 2001;Minbay et al 2001;Temel 2002;Temel et al 2005;Avci et al 2006).…”