Thanks to Emily and Tony from my lab for taking these lovely photos.
Monday, January 28, 2019
Case of the Week 529
The following objects were seen in a wet mount of a concentrated stool specimen from a 50-year-old woman. They measure approximately 50-60 micrometers in greatest dimension. No additional history is available. Identification?
Thanks to Emily and Tony from my lab for taking these lovely photos.
Thanks to Emily and Tony from my lab for taking these lovely photos.
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15 comments:
These objects are more compatible in morphology with pollen grains to me.
Florida Fan
egg of some helminth ?
Does your patient travell recently
Granulo di polline.
These are artifacts. The first 3 photos are clearly pollen grains, the last one is not so obvious.
Pollen grains, mushroom spore?
The photos seem like pollen from Centaurea, I think...
Baylisascaris
Pollen grains
:-)
Artifacts...
Pollen grains
Polate pollen grains with a reticulate surface. Cannot determine number of colpus (slits), but suspect 3. I agree with SilvaB that it resembles pollen of the cornflower (Psephellus).
Pollen is highly proteinaceous as are helminth eggs both of which can be concentrated using common parasite flotation methods. Pollenologists often survey local flora by examining loops microscopically lifted from local honey.
These structures superficially resemble ascarid eggs. Size, and surface texture would help with differentiation. Toxocara canis is 80-85 u greatest dimension with a golfball pitted surface texture. T. cat is 65-70u it also has the golfball pitting but smaller and less distinct then that of T. canis. Baylisascaris procyonis is 63-88 u and has a granular surface texture. I will always checkout surface texture by focusing up and down on the focal plane of an eggs surface. It is surprising the things you'll see. This is how we diagnosed a mixed infection of T. canis and B. procyonis in a dog.
Many plant materials can mimic parasite structures. We had a major problem when we were still using ZnSO4 centrifugal flotation to diagnose Giardia cyst. We found Giardia to be not all that common. However there were many clinics that were diagnosing multiple Giardiasis cases on a daily basis. It turns out they were i.d.ing yeast bodies as Giardia cysts. One can find yeast in almost any fecal.
Pollen grains
Agree with others that this is spurious passage of pollen. The last image is suggestive of spurious passage of a free-living nematode egg, but I think it is just an aberrant pollen grain.
Pollen
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