The use of Lucifer Yellow and Mini-Ruby for intracellular staining in fixed brain tissue: methodological considerations evaluated in rat and human autopsy brains.

The quality of intracellular filling of Mini-Ruby (MR) is comparable to that of Lucifer Yellow (LY) in both perfusion-fixed rat and immersion-fixed autopsy human tissue. In adult human brain, the use of MR avoids the co-conversion of the typical intracellular lipofuscin deposits as is invariably the case during the photoconversion of LY. In autopsy studies (n = 35), the quality of intracellular staining does not correlate with age (range: 25-91 years) or the postmortem delay (range: 7-50 h). A short agonal status, however, is advantageous.