Thread by @drkeithsiau

Pathology in food - a thread inspired by this wonderful paper and the recent discussions on food and pathology on Twitter.

Credit to the GRAPE working group for the paper and all images and captions:
peerj.com/preprints/2147…

Bon appetit!

Grape bunches. Staphylococcus aureus are spherical bacteria known as cocci that grow in clusters that look like grape bunches.

Spaghetti and meatballs appearance. On potassium hydroxide preparation, the filamentous hyphae and round spores of Tinea versicolor resemble spaghetti and meatballs respectively.

Salt and pepper chromatin. The nuclei in neuroendocrine tumors often show a salt and pepper appearance of the coarse, dark chromatin strands which look like pepper in a clear white background which looks like salt.

Fried egg nuclei. Hyperchromatic round nuclei surrounded by a clear zone in oligodendroglioma give the appearance of a fried egg with a yellow yolk surrounded by egg whites.

Coffee bean nuclei. In benign but sometimes malignant ovarian Brenner tumor, named after Fitz Brenner (1877 – 1969), some of the nuclei have a longitudinal groove similar to the groove found in coffee beans.

Doughnut cell. In the rare T-lymphocyte cancer, anaplastic large-cell lymphoma, some of the nuclei are ring-shaped with a central lucent region, resembling a doughnut.

Oat cell carcinoma. Small cell lung carcinoma cells have a relatively large nucleus, similar in shape and structure to oat grains.

Popcorn cell. Nodular lymphocyte predominant Hodgkin lymphoma, named after Thomas Hodgkin (1798 – 1866), can have nuclei with a lobulated form similar to a popcorn kernel.

Herringbone pattern. Groups of cells in fibrosarcoma are arranged in parallel patterns that resemble the skeleton of a herring.

Banana-shaped gametocyte. The sexual form of Plasmodium falciparum, which causes serious malaria, has a curved shape like a banana.

Lollipop or onion. In Castleman disease, the characteristically expanded mantle zone and a radially penetrating sclerotic blood vessel resemble a lollipop on a stick. Similarly, the expanded mantle zone can look like the multiple layers of an onion.

Bite cell. This red blood cell typical in oxidative stress from G6PD deficiency has a semicircular portion removed from its margin, resembling a bite into the cell.

Hungry for more?

Check out this paper for more food-pathology associations!

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…