With the Nissl-method, Fañanas cells can be identified by their slightly bigger, roundish and ovally shaped nuclei, scattered in the molecular and granular layer.
[2] The cells need to be prepared with a gold sublimate impregnation by Ramón y Cajal[7][2] or a silver staining method.
[8] The role of the Fañanas cell in the connectivity and structure of the cerebellar cortex is still unknown.
One study found deviations of the expression of Vimentin in patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) that could be related to pathological changes in Fañanas glia.
However, the results of the study did not point at significant mutations in Fañanas cells but rather described the possible importance of astrocytes in general in the aetiology of CJD.