Abstract
Practically every organ is supplied by lymphatic and blood vessels, but the presence of these vessels remains elusive at histological level, even using immunohistochemical staining. Currently available immunohistochemical information on lymphatic and blood vessels had derived from data using the routinely formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded tissue sections. We have performed immunochemical staining for lymphatic and blood vessels using frozen sections aiming to compare our data with previously reported results and to explore new information which has not been reported before. We used LYVE-1 for lymphatic vessels and von Willebrand factor for blood vessels. We studied more than one dozen normal tissues of non-human primate, rhesus monkey, including spleen, lymph node, heart, lungs, intestines, diaphragm, liver, pancreas, thyroid, ovary, prostate, kidney, and urinary bladder. Splenic sinusoids were lymphoreticular and blood vessels in structure and function. Lymphatic sinusoids were immunostained for LYVE-1 only and hepatic sinusoids were positive for LYVE-1 only. In the lungs, lymphatic vessels were diffusely distributed while von Willebrand factor immunostained onto the peripheral alveolar epithelia. In the normal colon, some lymphatic vessels were immunostained in the lamina propria. In the liver, sinusoids were diffusely immunostained for LYVE-1 in the frozen sections. In the kidney, glomerular epithelia were diffusely immunostained for von Willebrand factor. We found lymphatic and blood vessels were superiorly immunostained using frozen sections than using paraffin-embedded sections. Thus, frozen section immunohistochemical staining will superiorly depict lymphatic and blood vessels in normal organ tissues which had not been detected using the formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded sections before. More immunohistochemical information will forthcomimg using frozen sections. From our results, we conclude the significance of lymphatic and blood vascular system is unique for each organ in structure and function.