In clinical practice it is often necessary to deal with a pathologically altered liver (cirrhosis, hepatitis, etc.). Hence, it is of considerable interest to investigate the reparative regenerative capacity of a liver affected by a particular pathological process. In this plan of work, a study of the regeneration of a cirrhotically altered liver is of particular importance. Several authors [1,2,3] have observed a return to normal of the liver structure in rats with experimentally induced cirrhosis in the case where the animals were partially hepatotectomized.We also carried out experiments of this kind, but on rabbits. Another important difference in our investigations was that they were of a morphophysioiogical nature, i.e,, we not only demonstrated the morphological changes in the liver, but we also conducted biochemical analysis of the liver tissue, bile. and blood at different stages of regeneration. In this paper, we give a brief account of the general results of our experiments.
Experimental MethodCirrhosis was induced in male rabbits by a daily subcutaneous injection of 0.3 ml of Carbon tetrachloride over a period of 42 days.During this period, six rabbits died. The 25 remaining animals developed a pronounced cirrhosis accompanied by aseites. A month after the course of carbon tetrachloride injections was completed, the control and experimental (with experimental cirrhosis) animals were subjected to partial resection of the liver-the left lobes (comprising a little more than half of the entire organ) were removed. Eight of the operated rabbits were sacrificed 2-30 days after the operation; 13 rabbits with experimentally induced cirrhosis, but not subjected to resection of the liver, perished during the 10 days after the start of the operations.When the animals were sacrificed, their weight and the weight of the liver were determined. In the blood we determined the sugar content, total residual reduction, residual nitrogen, proteins, and cholesterol. Pieces of liver were taken for a quantitative determination of glycogen, ATP, cholesterol, fatty acids, the dry weight of the liver, and the respiration of liver slices in a Warburg apparatus.The material for histological examination was fixed in 10% formalin and Bouin's fluid. Some of the pieces were embedded in paraffin, and some were cut on a freezing microtome. The sections were stained in hematoxylin-eosin, van Gieson, and Suadn Ill.The number of mitoses were counted in 100 microscope fields (32 mm z slit in eyepiece diaphragm, eyepiece 7, objective 90). Sugar in the blood and bile was determined by the Hagedorn-Jensen method, the total residual reduction of the blood and bile by Stepun's method, blood proteins by the Robinson-Hogden technique, and the cholesterol in the blood and bile by Levchenko's method. The amount of glycogen was determined by 70
