Improved Fixation for Histological Demonstration of Glycogen and Comparison with Chemical Determination in Liver.

Abstract

SummaryGlycogen of rat liver was well preserved throughout histological blocks and was not displaced in the cells when pieces of liver were fixed in ice-cold picro-alcohol-formalin. After fixation, liver sections were stained by the Bauer-Feulgen method and the optical density of each section was measured on a Photovolt electronic photometer. Chemical determinations were made of the glycogen contained in other pieces of the same livers. The livers of rats undergoing progressive starvation from 6 to 48 hours showed good correlation between the chemically and histologically determined glycogen concentrations.