Contemporaneous Illustration of Megakaryopoiesis

Excerpt

The journey of production of mature circulating platelets from megakaryocytes residing in bone marrow requires tremendous cytoskeletal remodelling. One of the postulated mechanism involves an intermediary stage of proplatelet formation. The proplatelets are tubiform psuedopodial extensions of megakaryocytic cytoplasm into the marrow vascular sinusoids, which undergo fission to produce platelets. Above is an illustrative representation from the bone marrow (Wright Giemsa stain, 100×) of a 34-year-old male, known case of immune thrombocytopenic purpura, showing all the three stages of thrombopoiesis. The large mature megakaryocyte in the centre (denoted with *) is seen accompanied by foxtrotting proplatelets (denoted with solid arrows) along with mature anucleate platelets (denoted by arrow heads) derived from proplatelet microtubular restructuring (Fig. 1). Contrary to the platelets, megakaryocytes and proplatelets are almost never identified in peripheral blood films from healthy individuals, while, very rarely, these can be observed in some individuals with inherited thrombocytopenia and in conditions with accelerated platelet turnover.

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