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Ultrastructural aspects of female aging Wistar rat epithelium tongue: a HRSEM and TEM study
Marilia Gabriela de Oliveira Lopes1, Ii-sei Watanabe, Luís Eduardo Silva Soares
1Department of Anatomy, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
Background:
There is general consensus that the effects of intrinsic aging on the oral mucosa are relatively small, though potentially important to understanding the pathologies present in the aged animals.
Objective:
In this paper, the development of dorsal surface of rat tongue was examined using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and high-resolution scanning electron microscopy (HRSEM) in order to understand the age-related structural and ultrastructural changes experimentally.
Methods:
In this study, we used female rats 75 and 720 days old (adult and aging). Tissues of rat tongue were prepared and the specimens submitted to HRSEM and TEM techniques.
Results:
The analysis of HRSEM and TEM demonstrated that the same characteristic keratinous epithelium was found in aging animals, however with some modifications.
Conclusion:
We agree that there are obvious changes in the oral mucosa with aging and these modifications can be observed starting from the ultrastructural aspects.