Remodelling of the intracardiac ganglia in diabetic Goto-Kakizaki rats: an anatomical study

Cardiovascular Diabetology

Original Investigation

Vaida Batuleviciene¹  Thomas Frese²  Elmar Peschke³  Darius Batulevicius⁴  Dainius H Pauza⁴ 

[1] Department of Biomedical Diagnostics, Faculty of Medicine, Kauno Kolegija University of Applied Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania;Department of Primary Care, Leipzig Medical School, Leipzig, Germany;Institute of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, Germany;Institute of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania;

关键词: Heart;    Diabetes;    Cardiac ganglia;    Nerve;    Autonomic nervous system;    Neuropathy;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-2840-12-85

 received in 2013-02-15, accepted in 2013-05-31,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundAlthough cardiac autonomic neuropathy is one of major complications of diabetes mellitus (DM), anatomical data on cardiac innervation of diabetic animal models is scant and controversial. We performed this study to check whether long-term diabetic state impacts the anatomy of intracardiac ganglia in Goto-Kakizaki (GK) rats, a genetic model of type 2 DM.MethodsTwelve GK rats (276 ± 17 days of age; mean ± standard error) and 13 metabolically healthy Wistar rats (262 ± 5 days of age) as controls were used for this study. Blood glucose was determined using test strips, plasma insulin by radioimmunoassay. Intrinsic ganglia and nerves were visualized by acetylcholinesterase histochemistry on whole hearts. Ganglion area was measured, and the neuronal number was assessed according to ganglion area.ResultsThe GK rats had significantly elevated blood glucose level compared to controls (11.0 ± 0.6 vs. 5.9 ± 0.1 mmol/l, p < 0.001), but concentration of plasma insulin did not differ significantly between the two groups (84.0 ± 9.8 vs. 67.4 ± 10.9 pmol/l, p = 0.17). The GK rats contained significantly fewer intracardiac ganglia, decreased total area of intracardiac ganglia (1.4 ± 0.1 vs. 2.2 ± 0.1 mm2, p < 0.001) and smaller somata of ganglionic neurons. Mean total number of intracardiac neurons in GK rats was 1461 ± 62, while this number in control rats was higher by 39% and reached 2395 ± 110 (p < 0.001).ConclusionsResults of our study demonstrate the decreased number of intracardiac neurons in GK rats compared to metabolically healthy Wistar rats of similar age. It is likely that the observed structural remodelling of intracardiac ganglia in GK rats is caused by a long-term diabetic state.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Batulevicius et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013