Christmas factor

christmas

Who names this stuff, anyway?!

Coagulation factors, for the most part, have two names: a Roman numeral name and an English wordy name. (more…)

Virchow’s triad

Rudolf Virchow, a German pathologist in the 1800s, is considered by many to be “the father of pathology.” His famous Omnis cellula e cellula (“every cell originates from another existing cell like it”) theory, published in1858, rejected the then-prevalent belief that organisms could spontaneously arise from non-living matter (e.g., that maggots could spontaneously appear in decaying meat). (more…)

Hemophilia A

Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria reigned as British sovereign from 1837 until 1901. Britian enjoyed prosperity and growth under her monarchy, but her genetic legacy was another story. (more…)

Lymphocytic thyroiditis

lymphocytic-thyroiditis

The final member of the thyroiditis quartet is lymphocytic thyroiditis (also called silent thyroiditis). This type of thyroiditis is characterized histologically by – you guessed it – a ton of lymphocytes (as in the image above). (more…)

Hashimoto thyroiditis

hashimoto thyroiditis

We’ve been discussing thyroiditis lately (see posts from 4/27/09 and 4/28/09). There are four kinds of thyroiditis: Hashimoto, subacute granulomatous, lymphocytic, and fibrosing. (more…)

Left shift

left-shift

The term “left shift” means that a particular population of cells is “shifted” towards more immature precursors (meaning that there are more immature precursors present than you would normally see). (more…)

Sickle cell anemia

SCA

Sickle cell anemia is one of a larger group of inherited red blood cell disorders called hemoglobinopathies. (more…)