Red pulp of spleen with perfused venous sinusoids (human)

Stain: Azan. Cross-sectioned venous sinusoids with splenic cord (1). The wall of a sinusoid is composed of elongated rod-like endothelial cells that are orientated parallel to each other in the long axis of the sinusoid. There is a discontinuous pale-stained basement membrane (difficult to observe in light microscopy). Reticular fibres are deep-blue stained and are distributed everywhere. They are spirally wrapped fibres reinforcing the sinusoids. At (-->) the blue-stained dots of cross sectioned reticular fibres appear clearly surrounding a venous sinusoid. (2) arteriole