The effects of ionizing radiation on the growth plate in rat tibiae

Abstract

The deleterious effects of ionizing radiation on the growth plate continue to be cause for concern. This study evaluated the ionizing radiation effects on bone development and growth plate in the tibia of rats. All animals were submitted to ionizing radiation on the left leg. The animals were divided into two groups and euthanized 30 and 60 days after radiation. The tibiae were removed and separated into groups: control 30 days, irradiated 30 days, control 60 days and irradiated 60 days. Animals in each group (n = 7) were used for macroscopic and histological analysis. The irradiated tibiae showed arrested growth, angular deformity and limb length discrepancy when compared with nonirradiated tibiae. There was statistical difference between control and radiation groups in all the parameters analyzed, except in the lateral-medial thickness of the distal epiphysis. Histological analysis showed evident changes in the growth plate, which was thicker in the Groups irradiated for 30 days, and irradiated for 60 days, compared with their respective controls. The growth plate showed wide areas with disorganized zones of chondrocytes and severely reduced calcification zone. It was concluded that ionizing radiation damaged the growth plate, compromised the endochondral ossification process, and resulted in complete arrest of bone development.

Influência da oxigenação hiperbárica no reparo ósseo e organização do colágeno após radioterapia

“…The authors suggested that these disorganized regions represented residual areas of endochondral ossification that were not remodeled, not resorbed, and not replaced by lamellar bone on rat maturity (Shipov et al, 2013;Bach-Gansmo et al, 2013). The increased occurrence of such areas, accompanied by lamellar disorganization in irradiated groups, indicated compromised endochondral ossification due to radiation, as previously reported by Rocha et al (2016).…”

Ionizing radiation and bone quality: time-dependent effects

“…This suggested that IR reduced collagen maturity and crystallinity in the same proportions, thus without change in the ratio between the organic and inorganic matrix. Some studies in humans and animals have shown that IR impaired bone metabolism, leading to decreased bone mass [27, 32].…”

Automated bone healing evaluation: New approach to histomorphometric analysis

“…Plug‐ins and macros can be implemented using the ImageJ software (Reyes‐Fernandez et al, 2019). In addition, previous studies using semi‐automated methods have already assessed segmentation by thresholding, but without automatization (Batista et al, 2015; Dias et al, 2018; Rocha et al, 2016). The automatization in this study was not just created but also tested, and the resulting significant reduction in the time of analysis was encouraging.…”

“…T1DM is a metabolic disease (Wang et al, 2019) that causes hyperglycemia (Napoli et al, 2017; Palermo et al, 2017) which affects bone structure and repair (Nyman et al, 2011). HBO therapy has been suggested as an adjuvant therapy to improve and accelerate bone regeneration (Dias et al, 2018; Limirio et al, 2018; Rocha et al, 2016).…”