Procedure for processing of central nervous system tissue for immunofluorescence, light, and electron microscopic evaluation.

A rapid and simple procedure has been developed for the simultaneous localization of viral antigen in central nervous system tissues by immunofluorescnece and concomitant correlation with viral induced lesions in the contralateral brain hemisphere. In this study, one-half of the brain was excised from the dog under deep general anesthesia and samples were collected for immunofluorescence by snap freezing in liquid nitrogen. The other half of the brain was perfused under pressure with a buffered glutaraldehyde-paraformaldehyde mixture for subsequent light microscopic and ultrastructural evaluation. The technique was useful in studying central nervous system diseases in large outbred experimental subjects in which economic and other considerations developed for tissue processing in rodents was not feasible.