Injections of fluid or septal cell suspension grafts into the dentate gyrus of rats induce granule cell degeneration.
This study was originally aimed at investigating the effects of intragyral cell suspension grafts which had been enriched in basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) before being implanted into the rat hippocampus denervated by aspiration of the septohippocampal pathways. Whether treated with vehicle alone, vehicle + bFGF, cell suspension with or without bFGF, and irrespective of the surgical treatment (sham-operation, lesions or lesions + grafts), we unexpectedly found approximately 80% of the rats to show morphological alterations in the dentate gyrus (20 weeks post-grafting). These alterations consisted of loss of a part of the granule cells; this loss was most often located in the dorsal leaf of the dentate gyrus. Also, in the close vicinity of the degeneration area, we found severe shrinkage of the molecular layer and disappearance of the typical laminae pattern of acetylcholinesterase distribution. These observations confirm previous findings which showed that fluid injections into the dentate gyrus, a widely used technique for intracerebral administration of drugs, trophic factors or neural grafts, may induce undesirable granule cell necrosis.
Cassel
J C
JC
LNBC-U.P.R. 419 du CNRS, Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France.
Ballough
G P
GP
Kelche
C
C
Hofferer
E
E
Cassel
S
S
Will
B
B
D000818:Animals; D016380:Brain Tissue Transplantation / Q000502:physiology*; D003714:Denervation; D005260:Female; D016332:Fetal Tissue Transplantation; D016222:Fibroblast Growth Factor 2 / Q000494:pharmacology*; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000166:cytology / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D009410:Nerve Degeneration / Q000187:drug effects; D009474:Neurons / Q000166:cytology / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D051381:Rats
D016222:Fibroblast Growth Factor 2