[Effect of morphine dependence on the hypothalamus of the mother and offspring during postnatal ontogenesis...

Electron microscopy was used to study the time-course of changes in the neuroglia of the hypothalamus. The offspring manifested deceleration of the time of glia maturation with partial destruction of the protein-synthesizing and oxidative-energy structures as well as more frequent occurrence of satellitosis. The mothers and offspring demonstrated membranous bodies in the nucleus and cytoplasm of astrocytes, pronounced osmiophilia of the nucleus of oligodendrocytes accompanied by the impairment of myelination in the function of the latter ones (demyelinization) and axon degeneration by the dark type, which may serve a morphological substrate for the hypothalamic syndromes seen in patients suffering from opium dependence.