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| Chemicals \ Methylene Blue Triton-X |
Methylene Blue Triton-X Information
| This stain was suggested by a physician who had planned to publish an article, which to my knowledge was never published.
This stain was supposed to stain retained nucelii, such as in parakeratosis as found in psoriatic skin and nails.
It was thought, that by incubating nail shavings with a surfactant (Triton-X) and a nuclear stain (methylene blue) that differentiation between psoriatic and fungal nails might be possible. The technique was to be: put nail scrapings on a slide, similar to that for a wet mount, put on a cover slip, and flood the space between the slide and cover slip with the Methylene Blue-Triton X stain. Then the slide was to "incubate" for an hour or more. It is important to prevent the slide from drying out during this time. One way to do this, is to add one or two mm of depth of water at the bottom of a petri dish. Then put something inside (such as a couple of glass rods, barrels from glass droppers, or other device) to rest the slide on, above the level of the water. Cover the petri dish and after an hour or more examine.
Retained nuclei (parakeratosis) can be evaluated. It has been my experience in working with stain, that hyphae take up the stain quite intensely, and in fact, when the stain reaches the hyphae, is the most impressive stain I have yet seen for hyphae.
There is no clearing agent, so it may not penetrate thick scales, or nail scrapings readily, so that a negative result may only be a false negative. It may be somewhat unwieldly to incubate the slide for an hour or more.
This slide is an excellent hyphae stain for the durotak preparation. It is also a very nice slide for the thin scale of tinea versicolor and provides very prominent staining of both TV hyphae and spore clusters.
This is a single color stain, with the stain being concentrated by nuclear material and by hyphae and spores.
Observations of this stain made by James F. Dolezal, MD, FAAD, the medical director.
Available from Delasco, in squeeze dropper plastic bottles in 1/2 oz and 1 oz sizes.
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