Misplaced Pages

Asteroid body

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please help improve it to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details. (September 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Two asteroid bodies. H&E stain.

An asteroid body is a microscopic finding seen within the giant cells of granulomas in diseases such as sarcoidosis and foreign-body giant cell reactions.

There is controversy about their composition. Traditionally, they were thought to be cytoskeletal elements and to consist primarily of vimentin. However, more recent research suggested that that was incorrect and that they may be composed of lipids arranged into bilayer membranes.

They were also once thought to be related to centrioles, an organelle involved in cell division in eukaryotes.

See also

Additional images

References

  1. Cain, H; Kraus, B (Dec 1977). "Asteroid bodies: derivatives of the cytosphere. An electron microscopic contribution to the pathology of the cytocentre". Virchows Archiv B. 26 (2): 119–32. doi:10.1007/BF02889541. PMID 204105. S2CID 104329698.
  2. Cain, H; Kraus, B (1983). "Immunofluorescence microscopic demonstration of vimentin filaments in asteroid bodies of sarcoidosis. A comparison with electron microscopic findings". Virchows Archiv B. 42 (2): 213–26. doi:10.1007/BF02890384. PMID 6133393. S2CID 40233107.
  3. Papadimitriou, JC; Drachenberg, CB (1992). "Ultrastructural analysis of asteroid bodies: Evidence for membrane lipid bilayer nature of components". Ultrastruct Pathol. 16 (4): 413–421. doi:10.3109/01913129209057826. PMID 1323892.
  4. Kirkpatrick, CJ; Curry, A; Bisset, DL (1988). "Light- and electron-microscopic studies on multinucleated giant cells in sarcoid granuloma: new aspects of asteroid and Schaumann bodies". Ultrastruct Pathol. 12 (6): 581–97. doi:10.3109/01913128809056483. PMID 2853474.


Stub icon

This article related to pathology is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

Categories: