Ultrastructural features of the Purkinje cell damage caused by acrylamide in the rat: a new phenomenon in cellular neuropathology.

Abstract

Dosing rats with acrylamide leads to the formation in Purkinje cells of juxtanuclear clusters of tubular and vesicular smooth endoplastic reticulum (SER). A microtubule organizing centre forms in relation to these clusters and together they appear to move to the cell surface, where protrusions of plasmalemma form, often with overlying synaptic attachments, containing densely packed tubular and vesicular SER membranes. Usually the microtubule organizing centre immediately underlies this. Subsequently, appearances suggest that astroglial intrusions occur internal to the protrusions described above to which the tubulo-vesicular material appears to be transferred. During these events the organization of the cytoplasm of the Purkinje cell is grossly disturbed with apparent loss and disarray of rough endoplasmic reticulum (RER) and of polyribosomes. This temporal sequence of events can be followed after a single dose of acrylamide. In chronically intoxicated animals vacuolation and swelling of dendrites takes place and the Purkinje cell may die after all stages of the cellular transformations have been present. These unique events appear to be confined to Purkinje cells and are considered probably to be the result of a primary disturbance to SER synthesis caused by acrylamide. It is argued that the changes taking place in acrylamide intoxication in neurons that lead to degeneration in long axons are probably of the same general kind.