In light of the coronavirus pandemic, the Journal of Histotechnology marches on

As we have all dealt with the serious COV-19 Pandemic, my greatest hope is that none of our colleagues contracted the virus. This pandemic caused many drawbacks with time delays, interrupted work, short staffing, and closed down facilities. For laboratories continuing to operate, ensuring stringent, updated additional biosafety precautions were implemented to keep personnel safe from COV-19. More importantly and in the histology profession, there remains great concern about biosafety practices in the laboratory when handling tissues infected with the COV-19 virus. These include PPE gear, autopsy, and biopsy protocols with adequate fixation time to kill the virus in the collected tissue, tissue transport, processing, and even concerns during microtomy. Dr. Yongfu Wang has an article in this issue titled ‘A review of histology practices in Covid-19 pathology investigation’ to inform readers about these concerns which will be ongoing for some time to come. Well referenced, it discusses autopsy measures along with possibilities for using recent assay tools available to histology laboratories to help diagnose or study this disease. JOH has made an effort to get pertinent COV-19 publications out as quickly as possible and into the hands of histotechnologists who are working daily in diagnostic and research laboratories. The first COV-19 publication in JOH from Tony Henwood titled Coronavirus disinfection in histopathology [1] was well received and garnered over 55,000 views in 4 months. Dr. Wang’s review follows with more information and helps readers sift through the massive amount of COV-19 literature to date of online publication. The ongoing need by histology laboratories for precise biosafety guidelines is seen in queries on the NSH The Block, NSH interactions with the CDC Division of Laboratory Systems, and the NSH COVID-19 for Histotechs Resources (https://www.nsh.org/membership/covid-19-resources). As the official publication for NSH, JOH has a strong obligation to inform histotechnicians on COV-19 biosafety measures and methods to diagnose and/or study this virus. The journal invites people to submit papers on COV-19 immunohistochemical and molecular studies, but always include how the tissues were handled from collection to the final stained tissue sections. As always, the research papers in this issue present interesting topics from international authors. Dr. Seleem and his group have returned with a paper on the effects of a fungicide exposure and its neurotoxic effects on developing murine embryos with a conclusive warning that exposure to the particular fungicide should be avoided by all species during pregnancy. Dr. Liu and colleagues worked with Mongolian sheep adipose derived mesenchymal stem cell isolation, culture and induced differentiation which could be used for future studies in veterinary-related studies and biotechnology. Many histotechnicians produce H&E sections of human umbilical cords even on a daily basis. The work by Thomas and colleagues is a histology lesson on normal umbilical cords as compared to a cord from preeclampsia pregnancy and contains informative photo figures. The journal has an immunohistochemical study from the diagnostic dermatology area. This time it is from Gülseren and colleagues whose work addressed clinicopathological factors on tumoral podoplanin expression in cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma for potential use as prognostic marker. Another paper on staining efficacy of several routine and special stains demonstrates the diversity by which other laboratories conduct their pathological diagnostic work on decalcified stromal calcified maxillofacial lesions. Shefali and group compared routine hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) and Masson’s trichrome stains to methylene blue-acid fuchsin and picrosirius red staining on five different lesions. Be sure to note the referenced Masson’s trichrome method which does not use Bouins post fixation in the protocol. This should be of great interest to those wanting to eliminate Bouins from this special stain procedure. Do not forget to take Dr. Brooke Dubansky’s Test Your Knowledge for CEU from NSH and read the book review for Oncological Surgical Pathology. Once again, I am reminded of how diverse we are across so many disciplines and countries authors to educate our histotechnology colleagues. Histotechnology remains a broad science used as a tool for both diagnostic and research work. As seen so many times in communications with others, I continue to tell everyone to ‘Stay Safe’ from COV-19.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.