Variation In Cell Shape Research Articles

Evaluation of anti-aging and antioxidant properties of a new rose variety, Ever-rose

BackgroundRose flowers contain active ingredients such as flavonoids and volatile oils and are acknowledged to be good natural resources owing to their anti-aging and antioxidant properties. In this study, we develop four new rose varieties (named Ever-rose) that are fragrant, pest resistant, and easy to grow. Subsequently, we evaluate the properties of Ever-rose and its potential for use in anti-aging products.MethodsThe chemical composition of Ever-rose was determined using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography triple time-of-flight mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry. The antioxidant activity of the Ever-rose extract was evaluated using various assays, including superoxide dismutase activity, 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical-scavenging capacity, and xanthine oxidase activity. The variations in proteolytic matrix metalloproteinase-1 expression, collagen content after ultraviolet (UV) irradiation, and reactive-oxygen-species (ROS) levels after infrared A (IRA) treatment were evaluated. The variations in cell elasticity were assessed via atomic force microscopy.ResultsThe petal extracts of Ever-rose (named ER004(P), ER011(P), ER012(P), and ER015(P)) showed good antioxidant activity. They effectively inhibited UV irradiation-induced MMP-1 expression and IRA irradiation-induced increase in mitochondrial ROS levels. Additionally, they inhibited variations in cell shape and elasticity as aging progressed. In particular, ER011(P) demonstrated the best anti-aging and antioxidant effects.ConclusionThe newly developed Ever-rose showed excellent antioxidant and anti-aging effects. In particular, ER011(P) demonstrated the best properties owing to its high antioxidant content. Hence, it exhibits significant potential as a functional cosmetic ingredient.Graphical

Multi-scale hypergraph-based feature alignment network for cell localization

Cell localization in medical image analysis is a challenging task due to the significant variation in cell shape, size and color. Existing localization methods continue to tackle these challenges separately, frequently facing complications where these difficulties intersect and adversely impact model performance. In this paper, these challenges are first reframed as issues of feature misalignment between cell images and location maps, which are then collectively addressed. Specifically, we propose a feature alignment model based on a multi-scale hypergraph attention network. The model considers local regions in the feature map as nodes and utilizes a learnable similarity metric to construct hypergraphs at various scales. We then utilize a hypergraph convolutional network to aggregate the features associated with the nodes and achieve feature alignment between the cell images and location maps. Furthermore, we introduce a stepwise adaptive fusion module to fuse features at different levels effectively and adaptively. The comprehensive experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed multi-scale hypergraph attention module in addressing the issue of feature misalignment, and our model achieves state-of-the-art performance across various cell localization datasets.

The cell morphological diversity of Saccharomycotina yeasts.

The ∼1200 known species in subphylum Saccharomycotina are a highly diverse clade of unicellular fungi. During its lifecycle, a typical yeast exhibits multiple cell types with various morphologies; these morphologies vary across Saccharomycotina species. Here, we synthesize the evolutionary dimensions of variation in cellular morphology of yeasts across the subphylum, focusing on variation in cell shape, cell size, type of budding, and filament production. Examination of 332 representative species across the subphylum revealed that the most common budding cell shapes are ovoid, spherical, and ellipsoidal, and that their average length and width is 5.6µm and 3.6µm, respectively. 58.4% of yeast species examined can produce filamentous cells, and 87.3% of species reproduce asexually by multilateral budding, which does not require utilization of cell polarity for mitosis. Interestingly, ∼1.8% of species examined have not been observed to produce budding cells, but rather only produce filaments of septate hyphae and/or pseudohyphae. 76.9% of yeast species examined have sexual cycle descriptions, with most producing one to four ascospores that are most commonly hat-shaped (37.4%). Systematic description of yeast cellular morphological diversity and reconstruction of its evolution promises to enrich our understanding of the evolutionary cell biology of this major fungal lineage.

Classification of HEp-2 Staining Pattern Images Using Adapted Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network-Based Intra-Class Variation of Cell Shape.

There exists a growing interest from the clinical practice research communities in the development of methods to automate HEp-2 stained cells classification procedure from histopathological images. Challenges faced by these methods include variations in cell densities and cell patterns, overfitting of features, large-scale data volume and stained cells. In this paper, a multi-class multilayer perceptron technique is adapted by adding a new hidden layer to calculate the variation in the mean, scale, kurtosis and skewness of higher order spectra features of the cell shape information. The adapted technique is then jointly trained and the probability of classification calculated using a Softmax activation function. This method is proposed to address overfitting, stained and large-scale data volume problems, and classify HEp-2 staining cells into six classes. An extensive experimental analysis is studied to verify the results of the proposed method. The technique has been trained and tested on the dataset from ICPR-2014 and ICPR-2016 competitions using the Task-1. The experimental results have shown that the proposed model achieved higher accuracy of 90.3% (with data augmentation) than of 87.5% (with no data augmentation). In addition, the proposed framework is compared with existing methods, as well as, the results of methods using in ICPR2014 and ICPR2016 competitions.The results demonstrate that our proposed method effectively outperforms recent methods.

Basal body organization and cell geometry during the cell cycle in Tetrahymena thermophila.

Tetrahymena thermophila possesses arrays of motile cilia that promote fluid flow for cell motility. These consist of intricately organized basal bodies (BBs) that nucleate and position cilia at the cell cortex. Tetrahymena cell geometry and spatial organization of BBs play important roles in cell size, swimming, feeding, and division. How cell geometry and BB organization are established and maintained remains poorly understood, and prior studies have been limited due to difficulties in accurate BB identification and small sample size. We therefore developed an automated image processing pipeline that segments single cells, distinguishes unique BB populations, assigns BBs into distinct ciliary rows, and distinguishes new from mature BBs. We identified unique features to describe the variation of cell shape and BB spatial organization in unsynchronized single-cell images. The results reveal asymmetries in BB distribution and ingression of the cytokinetic furrow within the cell. Moreover, we establish novel spatial and temporal waves in new BB assembly through the cell cycle. Finally, we used measurements from single cells across the cell cycle to construct a generative model that allows synthesis of movies depicting single cells progressing through the cell cycle. Our approach is expected to be of particular value for characterizing Tetrahymena mutants.

Integrated intracellular organization and its variations in human iPS cells

Understanding how a subset of expressed genes dictates cellular phenotype is a considerable challenge owing to the large numbers of molecules involved, their combinatorics and the plethora of cellular behaviours that they determine1,2. Here we reduced this complexity by focusing on cellular organization—a key readout and driver of cell behaviour3,4—at the level of major cellular structures that represent distinct organelles and functional machines, and generated the WTC-11 hiPSC Single-Cell Image Dataset v1, which contains more than 200,000 live cells in 3D, spanning 25 key cellular structures. The scale and quality of this dataset permitted the creation of a generalizable analysis framework to convert raw image data of cells and their structures into dimensionally reduced, quantitative measurements that can be interpreted by humans, and to facilitate data exploration. This framework embraces the vast cell-to-cell variability that is observed within a normal population, facilitates the integration of cell-by-cell structural data and allows quantitative analyses of distinct, separable aspects of organization within and across different cell populations. We found that the integrated intracellular organization of interphase cells was robust to the wide range of variation in cell shape in the population; that the average locations of some structures became polarized in cells at the edges of colonies while maintaining the ‘wiring’ of their interactions with other structures; and that, by contrast, changes in the location of structures during early mitotic reorganization were accompanied by changes in their wiring.

Fundamental control of grade-specific colorectal cancer morphology by Src regulation of ezrin-centrosome engagement.

The phenotypic spectrum of colorectal cancer (CRC) is remarkably diverse, with seemingly endless variations in cell shape, mitotic figures and multicellular configurations. Despite this morphological complexity, histological grading of collective phenotype patterns provides robust prognostic stratification in CRC. Although mechanistic understanding is incomplete, previous studies have shown that the cortical protein ezrin controls diversification of cell shape, mitotic figure geometry and multicellular architecture, in 3D organotypic CRC cultures. Because ezrin is a substrate of Src tyrosine kinase that is frequently overexpressed in CRC, we investigated Src regulation of ezrin and morphogenic growth in 3D CRC cultures. Here we show that Src perturbations disrupt CRC epithelial spatial organisation. Aberrant Src activity suppresses formation of the cortical ezrin cap that anchors interphase centrosomes. In CRC cells with a normal centrosome number, these events lead to mitotic spindle misorientation, perturbation of cell cleavage, abnormal epithelial stratification, apical membrane misalignment, multilumen formation and evolution of cribriform multicellular morphology, a feature of low-grade cancer. In isogenic CRC cells with centrosome amplification, aberrant Src signalling promotes multipolar mitotic spindle formation, pleomorphism and morphological features of high-grade cancer. Translational studies in archival human CRC revealed associations between Src intensity, multipolar mitotic spindle frequency and high-grade cancer morphology. Collectively, our study reveals Src regulation of CRC morphogenic growth via ezrin-centrosome engagement and uncovers combined perturbations underlying transition to high-grade CRC morphology. © 2020 The Authors. The Journal of Pathology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

Amino Acid-Dependent Alterations in Cell Wall and Cell Morphology of Deinococcus indicus DR1.

Deinococcus radiodurans exhibits growth medium-dependent morphological variation in cell shape, but there is no evidence whether this phenomenon is observed in other members of the Deinococcaceae family. In this study, we isolated a red-pigmented, aerobic, Deinococcus indicus strain DR1 from Dadri wetland, India. This D. indicus strain exhibited cell–morphology transition from rod-shaped cells to multi-cell chains in a growth-medium-dependent fashion. In response to addition of 1% casamino acids in the minimal growth medium, rod-shaped cells formed multi-cell chains. Addition of all 20 amino acids to the minimal medium was able to recapitulate the phenotype. Specifically, a combination of L-methionine, L-lysine, L-aspartate, and L-threonine caused morphological alterations. The transition from rod shape to multi-cell chains is due to delay in daughter cell separation after cell division. Minimal medium supplemented with L-ornithine alone was able to cause cell morphology changes. Furthermore, a comparative UPLC analysis of PG fragments isolated from D. indicus cells propagated in different growth media revealed alterations in the PG composition. An increase in the overall cross-linkage of PG was observed in muropeptides from nutrient-rich TSB and NB media versus PYE medium. Overall our study highlights that environmental conditions influence PG composition and cell morphology in D. indicus.

Stiffness of MDCK II Cells Depends on Confluency and Cell Size

Mechanical phenotyping of adherent cells has become a serious tool in cell biology to understand how cells respond to their environment and eventually to identify disease patterns such as the malignancy of cancer cells. In the steady state, homeostasis is of pivotal importance, and cells strive to maintain their internal stresses even in challenging environments and in response to external chemical and mechanical stimuli. However, a major problem exists in determining mechanical properties because many techniques, such as atomic force microscopy, that assess these properties of adherent cells locally can only address a limited number of cells and provide elastic moduli that vary substantially from cell to cell. The origin of this spread in stiffness values is largely unknown and might limit the significance of measurements. Possible reasons for the disparity are variations in cell shape and size, as well as biological reasons such as the cell cycle or polarization state of the cell. Here, we show that stiffness of adherent epithelial cells rises with increasing projected apical cell area in a nonlinear fashion. This size stiffening not only occurs as a consequence of varying cell-seeding densities, it can also be observed within a small area of a particular cell culture. Experiments with single adherent cells attached to defined areas via microcontact printing show that size stiffening is limited to cells of a confluent monolayer. This leads to the conclusion that cells possibly regulate their size distribution through cortical stress, which is enhanced in larger cells and reduced in smaller cells.

Phenotypic Variability Correlates with Clinical Outcome in Cryptococcus Isolates Obtained from Botswanan HIV/AIDS Patients.

Pathogenic species of Cryptococcus cause hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. Considerable phenotypic variation is exhibited during infection, including increased capsule size, capsule shedding, giant cells (≥15 μm), and micro cells (≤1 μm). We examined 70 clinical isolates of Cryptococcus neoformans and Cryptococcus tetragattii from HIV/AIDS patients in Botswana to determine whether the capacity to produce morphological variants was associated with clinical parameters. Isolates were cultured under conditions designed to simulate in vivo stresses. Substantial variation was seen across morphological and clinical data. Giant cells were more common in C. tetragattii, while micro cells and shed capsule occurred in C. neoformans only. Phenotypic variables fell into two groups associated with differing symptoms. The production of "large" phenotypes (greater cell and capsule size and giant cells) was associated with higher CD4 count and was negatively correlated with intracranial pressure indicators, suggesting that these are induced in early stage infection. "Small" phenotypes (micro cells and shed capsule) were associated with lower CD4 counts, negatively correlated with meningeal inflammation indicators, and positively correlated with intracranial pressure indicators, suggesting that they are produced later during infection and may contribute to immune suppression and promote proliferation and dissemination. These trends persisted at the species level, indicating that they were not driven by association with particular Cryptococcus species. Isolates possessing giant cells, micro cells, and shed capsule were rare, but strikingly, they were associated with patient death (P = 0.0165). Our data indicate that pleomorphism is an important driver in Cryptococcus infection.IMPORTANCE Cryptococcosis results in hundreds of thousands of deaths annually, predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa. Cryptococcus is an encapsulated yeast, and during infection, cells have the capacity for substantial morphological changes, including capsule enlargement and shedding and variations in cell shape and size. In this study, we examined 70 Cryptococcus isolates causing meningitis in HIV/AIDS patients in Botswana in order to look for associations between phenotypic variation and clinical symptoms. Four variant phenotypes were seen across strains: giant cells of ≥15 µm, micro cells of ≤1 µm, shed extracellular capsule, and irregularly shaped cells. We found that "large" and "small" phenotypes were associated with differing disease symptoms, indicating that their production may be important during the disease process. Overall, our study indicates that Cryptococcus strains that can switch on cell types under different situations may be more able to sustain infection and resist the host response.

Geometric constraints during epithelial jamming

As an injury heals, an embryo develops, or a carcinoma spreads, epithelial cells systematically change their shape. In each of these processes cell shape is studied extensively whereas variability of shape from cell-to-cell is regarded most often as biological noise. But where do cell shape and its variability come from? Here we report that cell shape and shape variability are mutually constrained through a relationship that is purely geometrical. That relationship is shown to govern processes as diverse as maturation of the pseudostratified bronchial epithelial layer cultured from non-asthmatic or asthmatic donors, and formation of the ventral furrow in the Drosophila embryo. Across these and other epithelial systems, shape variability collapses to a family of distributions that is common to all. That distribution, in turn, is accounted for by a mechanistic theory of cell-cell interaction showing that cell shape becomes progressively less elongated and less variable as the layer becomes progressively more jammed. These findings suggest a connection between jamming and geometry that spans living organisms and inert jammed systems, and thus transcends system details. Although molecular events are needed for any complete theory of cell shape and cell packing, observations point to the hypothesis that jamming behavior at larger scales of organization sets overriding geometrical constraints.

Abstract 475: Human Saphenous Vein Progenitor Cells Are Susceptible to Mechanical Stimulation. Novel Insights in Pathologic Programming of Saphenous Vein Bypass Graft Disease

Background: Implantation of saphenous vein (SV) grafts into coronary position determines structural vessel wall remodeling and intimal hyperplasia. The role of the altered wall mechanics and cell-based mechanosensing has been recently implicated in the priming of this pathologic process. We investigated the effects of cyclic uniaxial strain on human saphenous vein progenitor cells (SVPs), a cell type endowed with pericyte stem cell characteristics resident in the adventitia. Methods: CD34 + CD31 - SVPs were isolated with immuno-magnetic sorting (MACS) from SVs of patients (age 58±12.6, Mean±SD) undergoing saphenectomy. Cells were subject to uniaxial strain (10% elongation; 1Hz) for 24 and 72 hrs using the FlexCell system. Cell orientation, immunofluorescence and western analyses were performed to assess the effects of strain on cell orientation/shape, cell cycle and activity of the YAP/Hippo-dependent mechanotransduction machinery. RNA-sequencing from control vs. strained SVPs was performed at both time points using RNA from cells of 5 independent donors. Results: Results indicated an increase in the expression of the cell cycle-associated markers Ki67 and pHH3 in mechanically stimulated vs. control SVPs at 24 hrs, followed by a significant reduction at 72 hrs of stimulation. Variations in cell shape was observed as verified by a significant change in the nuclei orientation in the strain field as well as in the cell shape index/spread areas at both time points. Immunofluorescence revealed a significant increase in cells showing a nuclear localization of the YAP transcription factor at 72hrs. In line with these findings Western analyses indicated a significant decrease in the ratio between phosphorylated/total YAP and its upstream kinase LATS in mechanically stimulated vs. control SVPs, suggesting an inhibition of the HIPPO kinase pathway by mechanosensing. RNASeq gene expression analyses showed a coherent modification of gene expression pathways and the upregulation of a specific HIPPO/YAP/TEAD gene expression signature in SVPs mechanically stimulated for 72hrs. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate the direct susceptibility of human SVPs to pathologic strain and identifies this cell population as mechano-perceptors in the vein wall.

Applying Faster R-CNN for Object Detection on Malaria Images.

Deep learning based models have had great success in object detection, but the state of the art models have not yet been widely applied to biological image data. We apply for the first time an object detection model previously used on natural images to identify cells and recognize their stages in brightfield microscopy images of malaria-infected blood. Many micro-organisms like malaria parasites are still studied by expert manual inspection and hand counting. This type of object detection task is challenging due to factors like variations in cell shape, density, and color, and uncertainty of some cell classes. In addition, annotated data useful for training is scarce, and the class distribution is inherently highly imbalanced due to the dominance of uninfected red blood cells. We use Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (Faster R-CNN), one of the top performing object detection models in recent years, pre-trained on ImageNet but fine tuned with our data, and compare it to a baseline, which is based on a traditional approach consisting of cell segmentation, extraction of several single-cell features, and classification using random forests. To conduct our initial study, we collect and label a dataset of 1300 fields of view consisting of around 100,000 individual cells. We demonstrate that Faster R-CNN outperforms our baseline and put the results in context of human performance.

Genomic variations leading to alterations in cell morphology of Campylobacter spp.

Campylobacter jejuni, the most common cause of bacterial diarrhoeal disease, is normally helical. However, it can also adopt straight rod, elongated helical and coccoid forms. Studying how helical morphology is generated, and how it switches between its different forms, is an important objective for understanding this pathogen. Here, we aimed to determine the genetic factors involved in generating the helical shape of Campylobacter. A C. jejuni transposon (Tn) mutant library was screened for non-helical mutants with inconsistent results. Whole genome sequence variation and morphological trends within this Tn library, and in various C. jejuni wild type strains, were compared and correlated to detect genomic elements associated with helical and rod morphologies. All rod-shaped C. jejuni Tn mutants and all rod-shaped laboratory, clinical and environmental C. jejuni and Campylobacter coli contained genetic changes within the pgp1 or pgp2 genes, which encode peptidoglycan modifying enzymes. We therefore confirm the importance of Pgp1 and Pgp2 in the maintenance of helical shape and extended this to a wide range of C. jejuni and C. coli isolates. Genome sequence analysis revealed variation in the sequence and length of homopolymeric tracts found within these genes, providing a potential mechanism of phase variation of cell shape.

Blue photoluminescent carbon nanodots from limeade

Carbon-based photoluminescent nanodot has currently been one of the promising materials for various applications. The remaining challenges are the carbon sources and the simple synthetic processes that enhance the quantum yield, photostability and biocompatibility of the nanodots. In this work, the synthesis of blue photoluminescent carbon nanodots from limeade via a single-step hydrothermal carbonization process is presented. Lime carbon nanodot (L-CnD), whose the quantum yield exceeding 50% for the 490nm emission in gram-scale amounts, has the structure of graphene core functionalized with the oxygen functional groups. The micron-sized flake of the as-prepared L-CnD powder exhibits multicolor emission depending on an excitation wavelength. The L-CnDs are demonstrated for rapidly ferric-ion (Fe3+) detection in water compared to Fe2+, Cu2+, Co2+, Zn2+, Mn2+ and Ni2+ ions. The photoluminescence quenching of L-CnD solution under UV light is used to distinguish the Fe3+ ions from others by naked eyes as low concentration as 100μM. Additionally, L-CnDs provide exceptional photostability and biocompatibility for imaging yeast cell morphology. Changes in morphology of living yeast cells, i.e. cell shape variation, and budding, can be observed in a minute-period until more than an hour without the photoluminescent intensity loss.

Joint modeling of cell and nuclear shape variation.

Modeling cell shape variation is critical to our understanding of cell biology. Previous work has demonstrated the utility of nonrigid image registration methods for the construction of nonparametric nuclear shape models in which pairwise deformation distances are measured between all shapes and are embedded into a low-dimensional shape space. Using these methods, we explore the relationship between cell shape and nuclear shape. We find that these are frequently dependent on each other and use this as the motivation for the development of combined cell and nuclear shape space models, extending nonparametric cell representations to multiple-component three-dimensional cellular shapes and identifying modes of joint shape variation. We learn a first-order dynamics model to predict cell and nuclear shapes, given shapes at a previous time point. We use this to determine the effects of endogenous protein tags or drugs on the shape dynamics of cell lines and show that tagged C1QBP reduces the correlation between cell and nuclear shape. To reduce the computational cost of learning these models, we demonstrate the ability to reconstruct shape spaces using a fraction of computed pairwise distances. The open-source tools provide a powerful basis for future studies of the molecular basis of cell organization.

Fully automatic evaluation of the corneal endothelium from in vivo confocal microscopy.

BackgroundManual and semi-automatic analyses of images, acquired in vivo by confocal microscopy, are often used to determine the quality of corneal endothelium in the human eye. These procedures are highly time consuming. Here, we present two fully automatic methods to analyze and quantify corneal endothelium imaged by in vivo white light slit-scanning confocal microscopy.MethodsIn the first approach, endothelial cell density is estimated with the help of spatial frequency analysis. We evaluate published methods, and propose a new, parameter-free method. In the second approach, based on the stochastic watershed, cells are automatically segmented and the result is used to estimate cell density, polymegathism (cell size variability) and pleomorphism (cell shape variation). We show how to determine optimal values for the three parameters of this algorithm, and compare its results to a semi-automatic delineation by a trained observer.ResultsThe frequency analysis method proposed here is more precise than any published method. The segmentation method outperforms the fully automatic method in the NAVIS software (Nidek Technologies Srl, Padova, Italy), which significantly overestimates the number of cells for cell densities below approximately 1200 mm−2, as well as previously published methods.ConclusionsThe methods presented here provide a significant improvement over the state of the art, and make in vivo, automated assessment of corneal endothelium more accessible. The segmentation method proposed paves the way to many possible new morphometric parameters, which can quickly and precisely be determined from the segmented image.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12880-015-0054-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Characterization and anti-settlement aspects of surface micro-structures from Cancer pagurus

Tuning surface and material properties to inhibit or prevent settlement and attachment of microorganisms is of interest for applications such as antifouling technologies. Here, optimization of nano- and microscale structures on immersed surfaces can be utilized to improve cell removal while reducing adhesion strength and the likelihood of initial cellular attachment. Engineered surfaces capable of controlling cellular behaviour under natural conditions are challenging to design due to the diversity of attaching cell types in environments such as marine waters, where many variations in cell shape, size and adhesion strategy exist. Nevertheless, understanding interactions between a cell and a potential substrate for adhesion, including topographically driven settlement cues, offers a route to designing surfaces capable of controlling cell settlement. Biomimetic design of artificial surfaces, based upon microscale features from natural surfaces, can be utilized as model surfaces to understand cell–surface interactions. The microscale surface features of the carapace from the crustacean Cancer pagurus has been previously found to influence the rate of attachment of particular organisms when compared to smooth controls. However, the nature of microscale topographic features from C. pagurus have not been examined in sufficient detail to allow design of biomimetic surfaces. In this work, the spatial distribution, chemical composition, size and shape descriptors of microscale surface features from C. pagurus are characterized in detail for the first time. Additionally, the influence of topography from C. pagurus on the settlement of marine diatoms is examined under field conditions.

Radioprotective effect of montelukast sodium in rat lacrimal glands after radioiodine treatment

PurposeThe aim of this study was to evaluate the morphological changes of rat lacrimal glands at the third month following radioiodine (RAI) treatment and the radioprotective effect of montelukast (ML) sodium against RAI-related lacrimal gland damage. MethodsFifty female Wistar Albino rats were divided into three groups. The control group (n=10) consisted of rats with no intervention. RAI group (n=20) consisted of rats treated with oral 131I (111 MBq). The ML group (n=20) consisted of rats treated with intraperitoneal 10mg/kg/day ML sodium, starting three days before and continuing for one week after oral RAI administration. Intraorbital (IG), extraorbital (EG) and Harderian glands (HG) were removed bilaterally after three months. ResultsThe existence of acinar atrophy, acinar fibrosis, abnormal cell lines, peripheral basophilia, cell size variation and decrease in amount of cytoplasm was significantly more common in the RAI-rat treated group than in the ML group, in each of the glands. The ML-treated group had less-frequent cell shape variation in EG (P=0.001) and HG (P=0.027), cell size variation in IG (P<0.001) and HG (P=0.01), ductal pathology in EG (P<0.001) and HG (P<0.001) and lipofuscin accumulation in EG (P=0.001) and in HG (P=0.01) than the RAI-treated group. ConclusionsRAI treatment seems to cause morphological damage to rat lacrimal glands, and ML sodium effectively protects against damage to lacrimal glands.

Radioprotective effect of montelukast sodium in rat lacrimal glands after radioiodine treatment

The aim of this study was to evaluate the morphological changes of rat lacrimal glands at the third month following radioiodine (RAI) treatment and the radioprotective effect of montelukast (ML) sodium against RAI-related lacrimal gland damage. Fifty female Wistar Albino rats were divided into three groups. The control group (n=10) consisted of rats with no intervention. RAI group (n=20) consisted of rats treated with oral (131)I (111 MBq). The ML group (n=20) consisted of rats treated with intraperitoneal 10mg/kg/day ML sodium, starting three days before and continuing for one week after oral RAI administration. Intraorbital (IG), extraorbital (EG) and Harderian glands (HG) were removed bilaterally after three months. The existence of acinar atrophy, acinar fibrosis, abnormal cell lines, peripheral basophilia, cell size variation and decrease in amount of cytoplasm was significantly more common in the RAI-rat treated group than in the ML group, in each of the glands. The ML-treated group had less-frequent cell shape variation in EG (P=0.001) and HG (P=0.027), cell size variation in IG (P<0.001) and HG (P=0.01), ductal pathology in EG (P<0.001) and HG (P<0.001) and lipofuscin accumulation in EG (P=0.001) and in HG (P=0.01) than the RAI-treated group. RAI treatment seems to cause morphological damage to rat lacrimal glands, and ML sodium effectively protects against damage to lacrimal glands.