ABSTRACT
Amyloidosis is the term for a category of disease processes that share a common feature: the self-assembly of abnormal proteins to form extracellular deposits in tissues of insoluble, non-branching, linear fibrils that extend 7-10 nm in width, vary in length, and resist proteolysis.1-3 It is likely that medical and forensic investigators recognized such deposits at autopsy over 350 years ago; some thought the material was a fatty substance, hence the term ‘lardaceous disease’.4 However, it was the pathologist Virchow who, in 1854, described the deposits in post mortem liver tissue with the botanical term ‘amyloid’ meaning ‘starch’ or ‘cellulose’, since they had a starch-like affinity for iodine. Virchow’s misnomer has proven resilient.5
