title: An immunohistochemical and morphometric study on astrocytes and microvasculature in the human cerebral cortex.
abstract: In this study, astrocytes and microvessels of the human cerebral cortex were analysed morphometrically with the aim of acquiring quantitative information on the glio-vascular relationships, considered to be of great importance in the formation and functioning of the blood-brain barrier. Immunohistochemistry for the astrocytic marker, glial fibrillary acidic protein, was used with a computerized image analysis system. The brain tissue was embedded using the progressive lowering of temperature method, and the image analyser was applied to semithin sections subjected to immunogold-silver staining and viewed by epipolarization microscopy. The results show that, in the human cerebral cortex, astrocytes cover 11.4% of the cortex area and that their perivascular processes are nearly as extensive as the vascular bed (0.8% versus 1.72% of the cortex area). These processes form a virtually continuous sheath around the vascular walls, only 11% of the vessel perimeter lacking this astrocytic glia covering. The present results, compared with previous unpublished data obtained by conventional immunocytochemical procedures on wax sections, indicate that low-temperature methods combined with gold-silver immunolabelling on semithin sections significantly improve the detection of immunoreactivity and the performance of the image analyser.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Human Anatomy, Histology and Embryology, University Medical School, Bari, Italy.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Virgintino
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Monaghan
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Robertson
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Errede
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bertossi
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ambrosi
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Roncali
mesh_terms: D001253:Astrocytes / Q000378:metabolism*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000098:blood supply* / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism; D005904:Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein / Q000032:analysis*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007150:Immunohistochemistry / Q000379:methods; D008833:Microcirculation / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism; D008859:Microscopy, Polarization; D016622:Silver Staining
chemical_list: D005904:Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein