Histology and histochemistry of human eccrine sweat glands, with special reference to their defense mechanisms
✍ Scribed by Lee, Marjorie M. C.
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1960
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 751 KB
- Volume
- 136
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0003-276X
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✦ Synopsis
In their histochemical investigations of the human eccrine sweat gland, Montagna et al. ('53) demonstrated coarse Schiff-reactive saliva-resistant granuels in the distal end of the "dark cells of the secretory coil, and reported that the granules showed a metachromatic tinge with toluidin blue at pH 5.0. However, the authors did not clearly distinguish these metachromatic granules from those composed of dense basophilic cytoplasmic RNA, also found in these cells. Lobitz et al. ('54a, '54b and '55) have described a thin lining of Schiffpositive, non-glycogen fibrillar material along the lumen of the sweat duct, which sometimes stains metachromatically with toluidin blue. Mucopolysaccharides apart, the saliva-resistant Schiff-positive substances present in eccrine sweat glands might also contain muco-or glycoprotein or glycolipid groups. Wislocki ('47) considers that not all metachromasia is referable to mucopolysaccharides. One aim of the experiments here reported was to use Steedman's ('50) Alcian blue 8GS to investigate the acid mucopolysaccharides in the human eccrine sweat gland. Steedman's method is specific, easily applied and gives clear and permanent results.
Certain morphological aspects of the eccrine sweat gland and duct are mentioned in this paper. Although most of these have been described previously, few attempts have been made to explain their functional significance. The purpose of this paper is to correlate the histological structure of the eccrine sweat glands and ducts with their acid mucopolysaccharide content and to suggest that their functions include a possible defense mechanism in the human skin.