Special stains may be requested when a patholgist or researcher needs to see stains demonstrating a specific substance such as, but not limited to: connective tissues, carbohydrates/mucoproteins, lipids, pigments/minerals, organisms, and nucleoproteins.  Special stains can be requested on paraffin tissue blocks (slides produced by the VDL Histotechnology laboratory) or precut slides (slides made by another laboratory and sent to the VDL).

 Special Stains 

 Acid Fast - Fite Faraco
 Acid Fast - Kinyoun's
 Acid Fast - Lipofuchsin
 Alcian Blue pH 2.5
 Chitosan
 Churukian-Schenk
 Congo Red
 Copper - Rhodanine 
 Fontana-Masson (Argentaffin/Melanin)
 Giemsa
 GMS - Grocott's Methenamine Silver
 Gram - Brown-Hopps
 Grimelius
 Hall's
 Holmes
 Iron - Prussian Blue 
 JMS - Jone Methenamine Silver
 Luxol Fast Blue
 Mayer's Mucicarmine
 Melanin Bleach
 Oil Red O (Frozen sections)
 PAS (Periodic Acid Schiff's)
 PAS with Amylase Digestion
 PASH (Periodic Acid Schiff's with Hematoxylin)
 PTAH (Phosphotungstic Acid Hematoxylin)
 Reticulin - Gordon & Sweets
 Rickettsia - Pierce VanderKamp
 Toluidine Blue
 Trichrome - Masson's
 VanGieson's
 Verhoeff's (Elastin)
 VonKossa's (Mineral)
 Warthin Starry (Bacteria/Spriochetes, Leptospirosis, Tyzzers)