Natural Sweeteners: An Alternative to Ethanol in Oral Exfoliative Cytology

Authors

  • Tiwari Vidyanshi
  • Bhat Atul A
  • Jaiswal Shradha
  • Bagulkar Bhupesh
  • Malviya Poonam
  • Sontakke Shantanu

Keywords:

cytological diagnosis, exfoliative cytology, cyto-techniques, oral exfoliative cytology, natural sweeteners, cell preservation, cytological fixatives

Abstract

Background: Fixation is one of the most important and primary steps for tissue or smear processing for microscopic examination. It helps us to maintain and preserve the consistent morphological features by preventing the autolysis, bacterial putrefaction of the tissue/ smear. For Cytology, Ethanol is considered as “Gold Standard”. Ethanol though an efficient cytological fixative, has few disadvantages such as it is bio-hazardous, expensive, flammable, volatile. Thus, there is a need to identify an alternate and eco-friendly replacement of ethanol.

Aims: To evaluate and compare the fixative properties of Honey, sugar and jaggery with ethanol in oral cytology smear.

Methodology: Comparative analytical study was carried out with 20 healthy individuals of similar age group without any oral pathologies and informed consent was taken. 4 oral smears obtained from buccal mucosa of each individual (n=20) by gentle scrapping. Slides were prepared and coded. Fixation done using: Bio Fix (Ethanol 95%), Sugar Solution (30%), Honey (20%), Jaggery solution (30%). Staining was done with Papanicolaou stain. Three Pathologists (observers), blinded for the fixative, evaluated the slides for five parameters i.e. Cell morphology, nuclear staining, cytoplasmic staining, clarity of staining and uniformity of staining.

Results: The result shows that Honey has better fixative property as compared to jaggery and sugar and was statistically significant to that of ethanol, while jaggery showed minimum fixative properties.

Conclusions: The present study shows that honey demonstrated comparable fixative properties to ethanol. So, honey can be used as an alternative to ethanol for cytological fixation.

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References

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Published

2025-09-02

How to Cite

1.
Vidyanshi T, Atul A B, Shradha J, Bhupesh B, Poonam M, Shantanu S. Natural Sweeteners: An Alternative to Ethanol in Oral Exfoliative Cytology. J Neonatal Surg [Internet]. 2025Sep.2 [cited 2025Sep.21];13(1):1057-63. Available from: https://jneonatalsurg.com/index.php/jns/article/view/9082

Issue

Vol. 13 (2024): Journal of Neonatal Surgery

Section

Original Article

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