Natural Alternative to D.P.X (Mounting Medium) - Comparison between Honey and Castor Oil

ABSTRACT

Introduction: To go organic is the theme of the present day.With added benefits of both honey and castor oil being ecofriendly, easily available, cost effective, nontoxic and noninflammable, they can also be used as an effective naturalalternative to synthetic mounting media as they have goodrefractive index. Study aimed to evaluate and compare theefficacy of honey and castor oil with D.P.X as a mountingmedium.Material and Methods: Six paraffin-embedded blocks with aconfirmed histopathological diagnosis of pyogenic granulomawere taken from the archives. Three sections were taken fromeach block and subjected to routine H & E staining procedures,and later they were mounted with three different mountingmedia and analyzed for different parameters.Result: The results were tabulated. Krushkal wallis test wasused for comparing the results. Statistically significant resultswere observed for different mounting media and castor oilshowed better details of cellular architecture than D.P.X andhoney.Conclusion: Both Castor oil and honey as a mounting mediashowed a superior quality over D.P.X due to their propertiesbut they do not adhere to the slide as well as cover slip withlack of adhesive agents. Both can be used as an alternative toD.P.X with the addition of some adhesive agents because theyare having a good refractive index.