Comparison of hematoxylin and eosin staining with and without pre treatment with marchi ’ s solution on nerve samples for nerve degeneration and regeneration studies

The study was conducted on four healthy guinea pigs ( Cavia porcellus) of either sex in which the nerve was identified and subjected to crush injury with the tip (3mm) of a curved hemostatic forceps. 30 days after the injury nerve samples were collected and subjected to Hematoxylin and Eosin staining with or without pretreatment with Marchi’s solution. The routine Hematoxylin and Eosin (H&E) stained all neural elements in various intensities of pink and in purple and the degenerative changes were seen as vacuoles ranging from vacuolated focicontaining eosinophilic material and associated with a distorted cell nucleus to larger, multilocular, linear array of compartmentalized digestion chambers supposed to contain myelin debris .The myelin on the other hand appeared as empty zones in H&E staining. Combining Marchi’s and H & E procedures revealed the presence black aggregates/ deposits in the vacuoles and digestion chambers. This method confirmed the presence of degenerated myelin inside the vacuoles and digestion chambers and thus may allow better analysis of nerve damage and regeneration.