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Parathyroid chief cell
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Almost all of the working tissue of a parathyroid gland, the part called its parenchyma, is built out of just two kinds of cells, and the chief cell is one of the two. The other kind is known as the oxyphil cell.
Parathyroid hormone, shortened to PTH, is the chief cell's line of business: the cell makes it and releases it. Packed into the cytoplasm, meaning the material that fills the cell, sit a great many secretory granules, and storing that hormone is exactly what they are for, like filled jars waiting on a pantry shelf. When the calcium in the blood runs low, the gland releases PTH, and without that hormone the body could not hold its calcium steady, the balance that the word homeostasis describes. Anyone who goes looking for one of these cells on a glass slide stained with the two dyes hematoxylin and eosin, viewed at high magnification, would find edges that are not cleanly drawn, cytoplasm that is scant and washed-out pink, and a nucleus that is big and round.
In brief
The parathyroid parenchyma is composed primarily of two cell types, chief and oxyphil cells; the chief cell synthesizes and secretes parathyroid hormone, or PTH.
For that job it holds numerous secretory granules in its cytoplasm; the gland secretes PTH when serum calcium runs low, and PTH is essential to maintaining calcium homeostasis.
On hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stain under high power, chief cells show poorly demarcated borders, scant pale pink cytoplasm, and large, round nuclei.
Sources (1)
- NCBI Bookshelf, U.S. National Library of MedicineHistology, Parathyroid Gland (StatPearls)
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