The effect of cyclophosphamide on the morphogenesis of the cerebellum in chick embryos.

Abstract

AbstractThe morphogenesis of cerebellum has been studied in 6–19 day old chick embryos after a single injection of 0.05 mg of cyclophosphamide into the yolk sacs on the fifth day of incubation. Besides degeneration of Purkinje cells, rate of development was markedly retarded as evidenced by late appearance of the fissures and folia of the cerebellum. Purkinje cells remained disorganised up to 18 days of incubation, though in controls they were arranged in a single line by the fifteenth day. The thickness of the external granular layer increased and persisted for a longer period in the treated embryos. The cytoarchitecture returned to normal on nineteenth day of incubation, but the size of the cerebellum was significantly smaller than that of controls (P < 0.001). Such transient disorganisation of the morphogenetic events in the neural tube may lead to inadequate and defective induction of surrounding mesenchyme, thereby resulting in defective skull formation through which the brain can herniate, i.e., exencephaly as reported in our earlier studies after cyclophosphamide administration in chicks (Singh et al., '71; Singh and Gupta, '72) and rats (Singh et al., '72).