Observation of a Flowing Duct in the Abdominal Wall by Using Nanoparticles

PLoS One. 2016 Mar 3;11(3):e0150423. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0150423. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

The primo vascular system (PVS) is being established as a circulatory system that corresponds to acupuncture meridians. There have been two critical questions in making the PVS accepted as a novel liquid flowing system. The first one was directly to show the flow of liquid in PVS and the second one was to explain why it was not observed in the conventional histological study of animal tissues. Flow in the PVS in the abdominal cavity was previously verified by injecting Alcian blue into a primo node. However, the tracing of the dye to other subsystems of the PVS has not been done. In the current work we injected fluorescent nanoparticles (FNPs) into a primo node and traced them along a primo vessel which was inside a fat tissue in the abdominal wall. Linea alba is a white middle line in the abdominal skin of a mammal and a band of fat tissue is located in parallel to the linea alba in the parietal side of the abdominal wall of a rat. In this fat band a primo vessel runs parallel to the prominent blood vessels in the fat band and is located just inside the parietal peritoneum. About the second question on the reason why the PVS was not in conventional histological study the current work provided the answer. Histological analysis with hematoxyline and eosine, Masson's trichrome, and Toluidine blue could not discriminate the primo vessel even when we knew the location of the PVS by the trace of the FNPs. This clearly explains why the PVS is hard to observe in conventional histology: it is not a matter of resolution but the contrast. The PVS has very similar structure to the connective tissues that surround the PVS. In the current work we propose a method to find the PVS: Observation of mast cell distribution with toluidine blue staining and the PN has a high density of mast cells, while the lymph node has low density.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Abdominal Cavity / anatomy & histology*
  • Abdominal Cavity / blood supply
  • Abdominal Fat / anatomy & histology*
  • Abdominal Fat / blood supply
  • Abdominal Fat / cytology
  • Abdominal Wall / anatomy & histology*
  • Abdominal Wall / blood supply
  • Acupuncture Points*
  • Alcian Blue / chemistry
  • Animals
  • Coloring Agents / chemistry
  • Eosine Yellowish-(YS)
  • Hematoxylin
  • Humans
  • Lymph Nodes / blood supply
  • Lymph Nodes / cytology
  • Lymphatic Vessels / anatomy & histology
  • Lymphatic Vessels / blood supply
  • Male
  • Mast Cells / cytology
  • Nanoparticles / chemistry*
  • Rats
  • Rats, Sprague-Dawley
  • Rheology
  • Rhodamines / chemistry
  • Staining and Labeling / methods*
  • Tolonium Chloride / chemistry

Substances

  • Coloring Agents
  • Rhodamines
  • Tolonium Chloride
  • rhodamine B
  • Alcian Blue
  • Eosine Yellowish-(YS)
  • Hematoxylin

Grants and funding

This research was supported in part by the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (2014) and by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning (grant number: 2013R1A1A2008343). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.