1 December (Tuesday) - What's In A Name?

About ten minutes ago I asked what’s the difference between an acanthocyte and an echinocyte anyway”?
I typed this into Google, and found out. Acanthocytes are irregularly spiculated cells (spicules are irregular in size, shape and distribution around the RBC membrane), whereas echinocytes are regularly spiculated cells.

In this picture acanthocytes are circled in blue and echinocytes in red. 


There’s a veterinary example here but the article goes on to say .. although these could be variants of acanthocytes, these are echinocytes. This demonstrates that these two RBC shapes can be difficult to distinguish from each other”.

I’m glad that article said that, as I don’t think that there’s a really tangible difference here…

 

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