THE MECHANISM OF THE MARCHI TYPE OF METHODS FOR VISUALIZING DEGENERATING MYELIN. MODEL EXPERIMENTS WITH PURE COMPOUNDS

Abstract

The chemical changes occurring in myelin lipids do not explain the reason for the specificity of Marchi's stain for degenerating myelin. Experiments were made with a number of pure compounds smeared on glass slides with the aim of finding the type of compound which might be responsible for the Marchi staining. Among the compounds tested heparin was the only one which fulfilled the requirements. This finding suggests a working hypothesis for further work on the mechanism of the early changes during demyelinization.