Saffron—A Connective Tissue Counterstain in Routine Pathology

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The hematoxylin-eosin (H&E) stain has been used routinely in the laboratories of clinical pathology all over the world for decades. The diagnosis of many pathologic changes are based on the specific reactions of this stain, ie, the eosinophilia and basophilia. One of the disadvantages of H&E is that muscle and connective tissue are difficult to set apart. Saffron dye, used for thousands of years, has been used sporadically in histology to stain connective tissue. We here present a method that combines H&E and saffron, preserving the advantages of the former stain and making it possible to differentiate between connective tissue and muscle. (The J Histotechnol 20:123, 1997)