Cytomorphological study of tigroid background in seminoma

Abstract

A tigroid or striped background shows dense and light stripes in the background in air-dried, Wright-Giemsa stained smears, characteristic of seminoma.
We studied factors in the pathogenesis of the tigroid background in 7 patients with seminoma.
We clarified that the appearance of tigroid background was related to glycogen-rich tumor cells, cellular smears, good air-dried smears, and abundant naked nuclei.
Therefore, the tigroid background was thought to result from disruption of the cytoplasm at the time of smearing.