The Kidney
Slide 3: (PAS staining) This is a tissue slide from a donor kidney, from which a biopsy was taken just before transplantation. The donor was 30 years old when he died of a car accident. You see two tissue specimens. One clearly shows the kidney capsule. Both pieces contain cortex, with glomeruli and tubes.
- Try to determine in the glomeruli what the capillary loops are, the mesangium, and the basement membrane.
- Do you see the endothelial cells in the capillary loop?
- And the podocytes?
Tubes are nicely arranged 'dos-a-dos'. The proximal tubular epithelium has a slightly larger cell type than the that of the distal tubes which have a cuboidal epithelium, and in the proximal tubes brush borders give a 'fluffy' appearance. Vessel are of course also present. Sporadically, a vessel may contain 'hyalinosis', an eosinophilic change which can be related to hypertension.
Slide 4: (PAS staining) This is a tissue slide from a transplanted kidney. A biopsy from this kidney was taken 15 years after transplantation.
Compare with slide 3:
- what strikes you?
- How do you call the changes in the glomeruli?
- What is the dominant cell type in the abundant inflammatory infiltrate?
- Do you see the atrophic tubes?
- To which glomeruli do you think they belong?