Can Formaldehyde Exposure Induce Histopathologic and Morphometric Changes on Rat Kidney?

Formaldehyde is used traditionally for fixing the cadaver, and vaporized during dissection and practical studying on cadaver. This study was designed to determine the histopathologic and morphometric changes of rat kidney while all of the experiments were exposed to formaldehyde for 18 weeks. 28 male albino Wistar rats were divided into the following three experimental groups (E1: 2hrs/d, 2d/w; E2: 2hrs/d, 4d/w; E3: 4hrs/d, 4d/w) and one control group (C). when the exposure period was expired the animals were anaesthetized with chloroform. After cervical dislocation, the abdomen was dissected and the kidneys were taken. The kidney specimens were sectioned and stained with Haematoxylin and Eosin technique for histologic and morphometric study. Data were obtained from an Olympus light microscope and the analyzed with spss (version 11.5) and ANOVA test. In all histopathology sections of groups E1, E2 and E3, these similar changes were seen: mild glumerolar congestion, focal congestion, and vacuolar degeneration of tubular cells. There were no evidences of inflammatory cells infiltration or fibrotic changes of interstitial tissue. Only mild, non-specific congestion was seen in cortical vessels. Also there were not any abnormalities in the staining of nucleus and cytoplasm. According to Morphometric study, Mean +/- SD of glomerulus's area in control, E1, E2 and E3 group were 10802.66 +/- 1038.18, 10759.50 +/- 1971.88, 10434.73 +/- 1763.76 and 10077.64 +/- 2068.78 micrometer, respectively. Mean +/- SD inner proximal tubule diameter in control, E1, E2 and E3 group were 16.16 +/- 2.49, 16.92 +/- 2.90, 16.31 +/- 2.79 and 15.66 +/- 4.11 mu m, respectively. Mean +/- SD of inner distal tubule diameter in control, E1, E2 and E3 group were 15.96 +/- 4.47, 16.20 +/- 1.66, 16.96 +/- 1.63 and 17.45 +/- 3.26 mu m, respectively. These differences were not significant between cases and control. This study showed that formaldehyde inhalation in 1.5 ppm can not make specific Histopathologic and Morphometric changes in rat kidney.