Apocrine acrosyringeal complex in the human skin.

The acrosyringium of human apocrine sweat apparatus has been studied by light and electron microscopy using horizontal continuous serial sections. The apocrine acrosyringium is composed of 3 structurally different portions, a highly keratinizing upper portion, an incompletely keratinizing midportion, and a least keratinizing lower portion. Throughout these 3 portions, there are 2 distinctly different but closely inter-related cellular units, namely (I) a keratinization process lacking membrane-coating granules but containing keratohyalin droplets occurring in its inner cell layer, and (II) a keratinization process rich in membrane-coating granules and containing keratohyalin granules occurring in its outer surrounding concentric cell layers. In contrast to the inner cell layer, the outer cell layer does not belong to the duct proper but rather should be considered as the periacrosyringeal complex layer which is specially differentiated to envelop the intra-epithelial duct. This apocrine acrosyringeal complex in the hair follicle seems to be essentially similar to that of the eccrine apparatus in the epidermis.