Human Blood Under The Microscope 🔬

Here we have a pre-prepared slide of human blood. Red blood cell does not contain a nucleus, whereas a white blood cell does. Can you see spot the smiling white blood cell?

The nucleus stains dark purple. There are also platelets which are much smaller than red blood cells and white blood cells, they look like tiny dots. Red blood cell is approximately half the side of the white blood cell and shows a shape of a donut. This indicates the cell is concave, thus giving it a higher surface area so it can carry more oxygen.

Although, looking at this slide, there appears to be a number of abnormal looking red blood cells. Instead of smooth curved shapes, there are some with what appears to be spikes. I remember seeing this when we experimented with mixing blood into different saline percentage solution. However I am not sure if this was the case, so I searched it up on trusty Google/Wikipedia for other explanations.

Acanthocyte (from the Greek word ἄκανθα acantha, meaning 'thorn'), in biology and medicine, refers to a form of red blood cell that has a spiked cell membrane, due to abnormal thorny projections. A similar term is spur cells. Often they may be confused with echinocytes or schistocytes.

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So how does acanthocyte and echinocytes differ?

Echinocytes are seen above. Notice how their thorny projections are short and regular, and have a central area of pallor. Look at how they compare to acanthocytes below:

The acanthocyte thorns are much sharper, longer, random and show no central area of pallor, as opposed to the echinocyte (Burr Cell) that has short, round, very regular thorny projections and show a central area of pallor.

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This is pretty interesting. Looking at the digital zoom image of the pre-prepared slide, a couple do look like acanthocyte and others burr cells.

I was thinking of making my own slide with my blood. But I didn’t like the idea of drawing blood on purpose. So I will wait until I accidentally cut myself, then I will collect a sample and make a fresh blood smear to check out under the microscope. I do wonder what I will find in my own blood.