Maternal Thalidomide Treatment and Cell Division in Cultured Rabbit Embryos: Automated Image Analysis of Autoradiographs: (thalidomide/autoradiography/rabbit embryo culture.).

Abstract

To determine whether thalidomide dysmorphogenesis was preceded by a changed pattern of cell division, embryos from thalidomide treated rabbits were cultured for four hours in a medium containing 3 H-thymidine. Automated image analysis of serial autoradiographs of the embryos revealed no focus of increased or decreased cell division in the neural tube or limb bud. Thalidomide pretreatment caused a general decrease in cell division at 10 days post coitum. A similar effect was observed only in those 10 3/4 day embryos whose status in culture was low. It was concluded that unlike methotrexate, the dysmorphogenic effect of thalidomide could not be attributed to a generally suppressed mitotic rate; rather, this teratogen preprogrammes dysmorphogenesis before the onset of the limb bud outgrowth (10 days) with the result that teratogenesis is manifest only during limb development after 11 days.