Look
what I saw down the microscope today. Cabot rings are thin, red-violet
staining, threadlike strands in the shape of a loop or figure of eight that are
found on rare occasions in red blood cells They are thought to be the microtubules which
are all that remains of mitotic spindles. Their presence indicates an
abnormality in erythropoiesis. There’s an entry on the things in Wikipedia (so it must be true!)
They
are incredibly rare; for all that I’ve seen them in text books, I can’t remember
seeing any in real life before.
The
patient presenting this had a congenital
dyserthyopoetic anaemia. There’s a more scholarly article on the things here.
But
look at the case in which this ring presented (It’s not really him from Star Trek!)
|
KIRK Admiral
James T 22-3-2233
R,18.0023742.K
R 26.02.18 Clinical details CDA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HBM WBCM PLT
HCT RBCM MCVM MCHM
MCHCM RDW N
211216
105 4.55 281 0.319
3.23 98.8 32.5 329
32.0 2.47
270317 F
105 5.50 217 0.307
3.17 96.8 33.1 342
31.3 3.22
070917 F
101 4.60 230 0.309
3.06 101.0 33.0 327
34.4 2.50
260218 F
108 5.71 328 0.323
3.31 97.6 32.6 334
31.7 2.95
L M
E B NUC NUCA
ESR GF
211216
1.38 0.42 0.10 0.18
270317 F
1.49 0.44 0.15 0.20
070917 F
1.50 0.40 0.10 0.20
260218 F
1.83 0.53 0.16 0.24
|
It
struck me as rather interesting that such an unusual morphological finding
would occur in such a mundane blood count; other than a mild anaemia there is
not a lot wrong with the blood count. I can only assume that a CDA on
presentation would have something in the blood count prompting preparation of a
blood film…
