[The structural and metabolic characteristics of bronchial smooth myocytes in thanatogenesis]

The present research was aimed to study the dynamics of changes of bronchial smooth myocytes morphometric and cytospectrophotometric indexes in thanatogenesis. Selected dissociation of albino outbred rat bronchial smooth myocytes was performed right after animals were killed (3, 6, 12, 24 and 48 hrs). Smears of the dissociated myocytes, stained after Feulgen to be revealed on DNA and of amid black stained general protein were examined by scanning cytospectrophotometer. Morphometric parameters of nucleus and cytoplasm were determined simultaneously. Continuous decrease of optical density of summary protein and DNA, corresponding with data from literature was found. Volume of myocyte cytoplasm significantly grows smaller within first 12 postmortem hrs, which results from population structure alteration due to elimination of cells with basically large cytoplasmic volume. Thus not only dynamics of cytochemical and linear parameters changes in cells should be taken into consideration in postmortem histological analysis of the lung material but also the changes of cell population structure.