Vol 71, No 2 (2012)
Original article
Published online: 2012-05-30
Gestational diabetes induced neuronal loss in CA1 and CA3 subfields of rat hippocampus in early postnatal life
Folia Morphol 2012;71(2):71-77.
Abstract
This study was conducted to determine the effect of gestational diabetes on the
neuronal density of CA1 and CA3 subfields of the hippocampus in Wistar rat offspring.
On day 1 of gestation, 10 dams were randomly allocated into two control
and diabetic groups. Five animals in the diabetic group received 40 mg/kg/b.w. of
streptozotocin (intraperitoneally) and the control animals were received normal saline.
Six offspring of each of the gestational diabetics and controls were randomly
selected in postnatal days 7 and 21. The infants were scarified and coronal sections
were taken from the right dorsal hippocampus and stained with cresyl violet. The
number of pyramidal cells per 10000 μm2 area and the thickness of layers of hippocampus
in CA1 and CA3 were evaluated. In postnatal day 7, the number of pyramidal
neurons in CA1 significantly reduced from 118.82 ± 8.0 in the control group to
84.71 ± 3.3 neurons in gestational diabetic group, and in postnatal day 21 it significantly
reduced from 112.71 ± 6.9 in the control group to 91.52 ± 8.5 in the
gestational diabetic group. Also, the number of pyramidal cells of CA3 on postnatal
day 7 significantly reduced from 90.33 ± 8.1 in the control group to 62.86 ± 7.2 in
the gestational diabetic group, and in P21 the number of pyramidal cells significantly
reduced from 78.33 ± 2.4 in the control group to 61.7 ± 9.5 cells in the diabetic
group. In CA1 and CA3 the thickness of the pyramidal layer on postnatal days 7 and
21 non-significantly increased in gestational diabetics in comparison with the controls.
This study showed that uncontrolled gestational diabetes reduces the pyramidal
neurons of the hippocampus in rat offspring.
Keywords: gestational diabeteshippocampuspyramidal neuronrat