Mason's stain
Under Maurersche mottling or "Maurer'sche columns" refers to large patches of irregular shape with colored Plasmodium falciparum blood smears or thick drops .
Sometimes column-shaped and tubular structures are also visible in the parasite or in the parasitophoric vacuole. Maurerian stain is a feature of the malaria diagnosis (blood test). The spots are the malaria pigment (broken down hemoglobin ) in the erythrocyte cell plasma, probably also in connection with proteins and lipids.
Even if schizonts are rare in P. falciparum , the Maurerian stain is an indication of malaria tropica . It differs significantly from the Schüffner stippling, which is also found in the cytoplasm of the erythrocytes in Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium ovale , and is much finer and in greater numbers than Maurer's stain in P. falciparum .
However, in very few P. falciparum blood smears, Maurer's stain is clearly evident, as mostly only young trophozoites (young signet ring stages) and only very rarely older trophozoites or even schizonts are found in the blood smears. This is due to the ability of the P. falciparum parasite to induce erythrocytes to produce cell adhesion proteins. With these, infected erythrocytes bind to the endothelia of capillaries (cytoadherence) so that they are no longer present in the flowing blood. The older trophozoites, which tend to have a stronger Maurerian stain, are therefore usually not to be found in the blood smear.
literature
- Christian G. Meyer: Tropical Medicine: Infectious Diseases. Hüthig Jehle Rehm, Landsberg 2007, ISBN 978-3-609-16334-5 .
- Volker Storch, Ulrich Welsch: Kukenthal zoological internship. Springer Spectrum, Akad. Verl., Heidelberg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8274-1998-9 .