Summary
Biopsy study by ultrastructural methods of sural nerve from two patients with chronic hypertrophic neuropathy showed giant vacuolation of endoneurial fibroblasts. These fibroblast changes have been described previously only in two sisters with hereditary sensory neuropathy (Schoeneet al.). The pathological background in which giant vacuolation of fibroblasts occurs is in chronic neuropathies with severe nerve fiber loss and prominent looselyarranged interstitial spaces containing amorphous substance of moderate electron density. The histochemical staining reactions of the amorphous interstitial substance are variable and of uncertain usefulness.
It is tentatively concluded that giant vacuolation of endoneurial fibroblasts is not a disease-specific reaction, but accompanies those chronic, scarring disease processes of nerve that result in extreme nerve fiber loss and an enlarged loose-textured myxoid interstitium.
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Supported in part by USPHS research grant NS-09359.
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Asbury, A.K., Cox, S.C. & Baringer, J.R. The significance of giant vacuolation of endoneurial fibroblasts. Acta Neuropathol 18, 123–131 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00687600
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00687600