Impact of hypertension in liver regeneration in rats.

PURPOSE: To determine the impact of hypertension in liver regeneration, in rats by examining gain in liver mass and the replication of hepatocytes and stellate cells.

METHODS

Forty Wistar rats were allocated into two groups of twenty, the control and experiment group. The experiment group animals were submitted to induction of renovascular hypertension. A week later, all the animals underwent a partial hepatectomy. Measurements were taken after 24 hours and seven days, when ten animals in each group were euthanized. Thus, four subgroups were obtained. The livers were excised and sent for histopathological analysis.

RESULTS

The control group had a greater gain in liver mass than the experiment group seven days after partial hepatectomy (p=0.0051). The difference in the activate stellate cell count was not statistically significant following analysis after both 24 hours and seven days (p=1.0). A higher number of dividing hepatocytes was observed in the control group seven days after partial hepatectomy (p=0.0014).

CONCLUSION

In rats, hypertension had no direct influence on stellate cell replication, but led to a delay in liver mass gain and were shown to be a reduction factor on hepatocyte replication seven days after partial hepatectomy.