Abstract

TORRES-FERNANDEZ, Orlando; MONROY-GOMEZ, Jeison Alexander  and  SARMIENTO LACERA, Ladys Esther. DENDRITRIC ULTRASTRUCTURE ON PYRAMIDAL NEURONS OF MICE INOCULATED WITH RABIES VIRUS. Biosalud [online]. 2016, vol.15, n.1, pp.9-16. ISSN 1657-9550.  https://doi.org/10.17151/biosa.2016.15.1.2.

Objectives: To study the effect of rabies infection on the dendritic ultrastructure of pyramidal neurons in the cerebral cortex of mice intramuscularly inoculated with rabies virus. Methods: Adult mice inoculated with rabies virus and mice inoculated with vehicle solution without the virus (controls) were fixed by intracardiac perfusion with a solution containing 4% paraformaldehyde and 2% glutaraldehyde. When infected animals showed advanced signs of disease, their brains were extracted and cut into the coronal plane on a vibratome. Small and thin fragments of these cuts containing motor cortex area were processed for transmission electron microscopy. Results: Distal dendrites of pyramidal neurons of control animals showed long and narrow mitochondria and abundant microtubules arranged in parallel with the cell membrane. In distal dendrites of pyramidal neurons of rabiesinfected mice some irregular shape electrondense structures similar to myelin figures were observed but elongated mitochondria were not observed, and microtubules were scarce. Some dendrites also exhibited vacuole formation interrupting the continuity of cytoplasm and microtubules. Conclusion: Infection with rabies virus produced ultrastructural changes within dendrites of the cortical pyramidal neurons that apparently were not known. These results are consistent with previous findings using other techniques and experimental models where it has been shown dendritic pathology induced by infection with rabies.

Keywords : rabies virus; dendritic pathology; myelin figures; microtubules; pyramidal neurons; ultrastructure of nervous tissue.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )