Rat Liver Regeneration: The Novel Use of Hepatic Iron Content after Iron Loading as a Stable Reference Base for Evaluation of the Effects of Chemical Sympathectomy of 6-OH-Dopamine

摘要

This thesis describes: (a) the development of methods to quantitate hepatic regeneration in the rat after 2/3 hepatectomy and (b) the application of these methods to assessing the effects on the regenerating liver of pretreating rats with 6-hydroxydopamine (abbr. 60HDA), a specific sympathetic neurotoxin. A major difficulty in the investigation of hepatic regeneration has been the lack of an analytical reference standard. Experiments are described in which rats were injected with 50 mg of iron (as iron dextran) in order to iron load their livers. Stored hepatic iron was found to be stable enough to be used as a reference standard in the regenerating rat liver system. The effectiveness of 60HDA in producing a chemical sympathectomy in the rat was tested by administering exp 3 H-norepinephrine and measuring the uptake in the heart and in the liver. 60HDA was used to assess the effects of destruction of the sympathetic nervous system on the regenerative response in the partially hepatectomized rat. Variations in the size of the thymidine triphosphate (dTTP) and thymidine diphosphate (dTDP) pools, and the increase in DNA content with time after partial hepatectomy were measured using hepatic iron as a reference standard. 150 references, 20 figures, 9 tables. (ERA citation 09:046731)