Percentage of Tapered Ends in Collagen

Many methods have been used in an effort to elucidate any change that may occur in collagen plus ground substance in the group designated "collagen disease." The electron microscope furnishes fine morphological detail, and it was hoped that a correlation could be established between the configuration of the collagen fibril ends and the type of disease, which would shed light on the processes involved. Banfield1 has already shown that the number of fibrils with tapered ends, in contradistinction to those with square or broken ends, is increased where collagen is apparently being actively formed (embryonic human tissue and mesenchymal neoplasms). The possibility of similar collagen activity in diseases of the connective tissue prompted the present study. The abdominal skin collagen from 104 individuals (20 from biopsies and the remainder from autopsies) with and without collagen disorders were examined under the electron microscope, and the percentage of tapered to total fibril ends determined.