I came across a question regarding the Warthin-Starry principle. The usual explanation is, that bacterias are able to bind silver onto their surface, that is further reduced by hydrochinon to visible silver-deposits. But why?
The pH must be held at pH4 with citric acid.
IHC shows that endogenous peroxidase survives the embedding-process.
Spirochetes (and others) are catalase and oxidase positive.
Silver-ISH shows, that peroxidase with H2O2 can be used to reduce Silveracetate for silver-deposits.
Is there a possible relationship between the bacterial enzymes and the WS principle?
Dear Gudrun, I try to explain you what will happen during this Warthin-Starry-siler-stain.When you put your sections into the first silvernitrate-solution silver-grains will bind on surface structures of the bacterias. This property is called agryophily. Nerv tissue, reticular conectiv tissue, some bacterais an fungis have this property. That is the reason why you can detect this structures by silver stainig techniques.
In the second solution which contains silvernitrate, hydrochinone and gelatine the silvergrains would be reduced to the visible sliver-deposits and this leads to the black stainig of your structure of interest. Sometimes fixation steps in Na-thisulfate or formalin are added to stabilize the staining result.
Why some tissue strucutures have this agryophilic property and other ones not is not cleared till now. The formalin fixaton plays an importened roul to get good stainig results.
I have red this in an old histology book: Hans-Christian Burck " Histologische Techniken".
If you like I can send you a copy of this chapter. I hope this information will help you alittle bit. Best regards an good luck, Ute
thank you Ute, but these facts are familiar for me. I wanted to get beyond the mistery of the silver-binding.
Regarding other silver-techniques, there is often an oxidation-step to form aldehyde-groups in the tissue (eg. collagen-fibers that are glycoproteins). The aldehyde reduces silver-ions, etc.. But for the Warthin-Starry, there must be another chemical cause for the binding.
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