Electron microscopic quantification of diabetic microangiopathy

M. D. Siperstein, Philip Raskin, H. Burns

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

51 Scopus citations

Abstract

Several methods of quantifying muscle capillary basement membrane width have been evaluated with the aim of determining whether variations in technic may influence the sensitivity of detecting significant capillary basement membrane thickening in diabetic subjects. The results demonstrate that fixation of tissue in osmic acid followed by determination of mean basement membrane thickness reveals significant basement membrane thickening in over 90% of diabetic subjects. The error in estimation of mean basement membrane width due to oblique sectioning of diabetic capillaries is shown to be small, i.e. approximately 10%. By contrast, measuring only the minimum basement membrane thickness of a capillary may underestimate diabetic basement membrane hypertrophy by from 20 to 40%. As compared to osmic acid fixation, glutaraldehyde leads to a very significant increase in the basement membrane width affecting normal capillaries relatively more than diabetic capillaries. As a result, either fixation in glutaraldehyde or measurement of minimum basement membrane thickness may lead to a marked decrease in the sensitivity of the quantitative basement membrane technic. A procedure that employs both glutaraldehyde fixation and measurement of only minimum basement membrane width would appear to detect microangiopathy in only 45% of diabetic subjects.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)514-524
Number of pages11
JournalDiabetes
Volume22
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - 1973

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Internal Medicine
  • Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Electron microscopic quantification of diabetic microangiopathy'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this