A giant cell is a mass formed by the union of several distinct cells (usually macrophages). It can arise in response to an infection, such as from tuberculosis, herpes, or HIV, or foreign body.
Types include:
- foreign-body giant cell
- Langhans giant cell
- Touton giant cells
- Aschoff Giant Cells (found in Rheumatic heart disease)
- Reed–Sternberg cell
Also
- as in subependymal giant cell astrocytoma
Read more about Giant Cell: Additional Images
Famous quotes containing the words giant and/or cell:
“The point of the dragonflys terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesnt ... but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the worlds water and weather, the worlds nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“A cell for prayer, a hall for joy,
They treated nature as they would.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)