title: Microwave-assisted antigen retrieval and incubation with cox-2 antibody of archival paraffin-embedded human oligodendroglioma and astrocytomas.
abstract: Immunohistochemistry is an important tool that is often used for the diagnosis of pathologies; however, the length of time required to process the tissue is relatively long. Furthermore, the quality and sensitivity of immunohistochemical staining is affected by formalin fixation which results in variable loss of antigenicity, known as masking effect. Here we assess the effect of microwave irradiation on the incubation time required to obtain high quality immunohistochemical staining for cox-2 using archival formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded human oligodendrogliomas and astrocytomas. The results show that intermittent microwave irradiation during the incubation with the primary antibody reduced the time requirement to 5 min while the staining quality was indistinguishable from 1 or 24 h long incubations. Thus, the use of this procedure results in a significant saving of time which is important for a timely diagnosis of pathological conditions that await treatment.
authors.affiliation: Uludag University, Faculty of Medicine, Histology and Embryology Department, Bursa, Turkey. sehime@uludag.edu.tr
authors.forename: Sehime G
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Temel
authors.forename: F Zehra
authors.initials: FZ
authors.lastname: Minbay
authors.forename: Zeynep
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Kahveci
authors.forename: Lothar
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jennes
mesh_terms: D000951:Antigens, Neoplasm / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D001254:Astrocytoma / Q000276:immunology*; D001932:Brain Neoplasms / Q000276:immunology*; D002138:Calibration; D051546:Cyclooxygenase 2 / Q000276:immunology*; D005404:Fixatives; D005557:Formaldehyde; D006801:Humans; D007150:Immunohistochemistry; D008872:Microwaves; D009837:Oligodendroglioma / Q000276:immunology*; D016612:Paraffin Embedding
chemical_list: D000951:Antigens, Neoplasm; D005404:Fixatives; D005557:Formaldehyde; D051546:Cyclooxygenase 2