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Journal of Pathology Vol. 117 No. 3 B O N E G R O W T H CH A N G E S I N P Y R I D O X I N E DEFICIENT RATS R. A. RODDA Department of Pathology, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 7001, Australia

PLATESLXXII-LXXIV SINCEGyorgy (1935) established that the development of rat acrodynia was due to to a lack of dietary vitamin B6, various lesions in the rat resulting from pyridoxine deficiency have been described in detail in the liver (Halliday, 1938), skin (Sullivan and Nicholls, 1940), mucocutaneous junctions (Ramalingaswami and Sinclair, 1953), haemopoietic tissues (Kornberg, Tabor and Sebrell, 1945; Hawkins, Lechow and Evans, 1952; Ramalingaswami and Sinclair, 1954; Batchen et al., 1955; Dinning and Day, 1956; Shew, Wong and Oguro, 1964), thymus (Butler and Morgan, 1954), endocrine glands (Stebbins, 1951; Huber and Gershoff, 1965) and kidney (Gershoff, 1970; McCombs and Gershoff, 1972). Although Silberberg and Levy (1948) have described the bones in pyridoxine-deficient mice, there has been but brief reference (Antopol and Unna, 1942) to the growth abnormalities of bone in the pyridoxine-deficient rat. The present paper describes the changes in the long bone metaphyses in rats fed a diet deficient in pyridoxine. MATERIALS AND METHODS Five litters of weanling rats born on the same day were each culled to six, pooled, weighed individually and divided into three male and three female groups matched for average weight. The animals in each of the six groups were identified by ear marks and weighed individually daily. One group of each sex was fed ad libitum a pelleted commercial pyridoxine-deficient test rat diet containing 30 per cent. casein (French, 1966) obtained from General Biochemicals, Laboratory Park, Chagrin Falls, Ohio 44022--catalogue 170610, lot 112346. The second group of each sex was used as paired-fed controls and the third group of each sex was used as paired-weight-gain controls. The paired-fed control groups were each given the same amount of the same food daily as that consumed by the test group of the same sex and the paired-weight-gain control groups were given amounts of the same food which maintained the same weight gain as that of the test group of the same sex. All control Received 4 Nov. 1974; accepted 9 Dec. 1974. of this work was performed at the Dept. of Neuropathology, Institute of Psychiatry, London, England.

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animals were given a daily supplement of 500 p g of pyridoxine hydrochloride in 0.5 ml of water by intraperitoneal injection. In another experiment two normal female rats in the middle of pregnancy were selected and both were then fed the pyridoxine-free test diet but one was given the pyridoxine hydrochloride supplement and paired-fed. Five sucklings from the litter of the pyridoxine-deficient mother were compared with sucklings from the control litter. In a third experiment two litters of male and females together were fed the pyridoxine-deficient diet from weaning and matched control litters were paired-fed and given the daily supplementary pyridoxine. The test and control animals were killed with ether approximately at weekly intervals and X-rayed with the paws held in wooden clamps and the limbs stretched spreadeagled. A Rank mobile X-ray machine set on fine focus at 35 kV and 50 mA was used at a tube distance of 150 cm exposing Kodak Industrex film for 16 s. Bone growth was assessed by measurements of the lengths of the long bones of the limbs on the radiographs. After skinning, the fore and hind limbs and girdles were separated from the body and fixed in forrnalin. After removal of muscle the bones were decalcified, embedded in paraffin and sections stained with haematoxylin and eosin. Altogether 33 pyridoxine-deficient animals (19 male and 14 female) were compared with 35 control animals (17 male and 18 female) at ages of 18 days to 173 days.

RESULTS Body growth As was shown by Sullivan and Nicholls, the pyridoxine-deficient rats generally appeared smaller and weighed less than the paired-fed control animals of the same age and sex. In the present experiments this lower rate of general growth is demonstrated in the male rats by negative weight differences at different ages between the pyridoxine-deficient and the paired-fed control animals as shown in fig. 1. The differences in weight became more pronounced as the animals remained under the experimental conditions longer. Application of Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient gives r, = 0.88 with P

Bone growth changes in pyridoxine-deficient rats.

Male and female rats were fed a commercial diet lacking pyridoxine. Using radiological and histological methods the growth of the long bones in the py...
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