Histological Features of the Vomeronasal Organ in New Born Lambs (Ovis aries)

Abstract

Background: vomernasal organ is an auxiliary olfactory organ which located at the base of nasal septumcomposed of olfactory epithelium and being enclosed by cartilaginous capsule. The current study was aimedto investigate the histological structure of vomernasal organ in new born lamb.Methods: six heads of new born lamb were used for this study. The nasal cavity including the hard palatewas sward up into four transvers sections. The sections were processed with paraffin embedding techniqueand tissue sections were stained with H&E stain.Conclusions: The rostral and middle portions of vomeronasals duct had medial and lateral walls with crescentshape lumen and enclosed completely by hyaline cartilage. The medial wall was lined with still diffentiatingneuro-epithelium, possessed many of intra epithelial capillaries and composed of supporting, bipolar neuron& basal cells. The lateral wall was lined with differentiating respiratory epithelium. The lamina propriasubmucosa beneath both neuro and respiratory epithelia composed of ruminant of embryonic mesenchymaltissue contained newly formed glands, blood vessels and nerves. A significant (p<0.05) difference wasrecoded between the diameters of the rostral, middle portions and caudal portion of both gender and therewere no differences between genders. The epithelial height of the neuro epithelia of the middle portion inboth gender had significant value (p<0.05) in compare with epithelia of other portions.