Allometric study of the postnatal development of the rat sublingual glands.

The authors studied the rat sublingual glands growth in the period of 2 to 40 days of the postnatal life. The allometric coefficients for the gland mass growth and morphometrically evaluated volume of different gland components in relation to body mass growth, and for the parenchymal volume growth in relation to stroma volume growth, were calculated by the Wald non parametric method, modified by Bartlett. The allometric analysis showed that the gland mass, the mucous cells volume, the serous cells volume, the duct volume and the stroma volume exhibited statistically significant allometric growths with monophasic pattern and allometric coefficient of 0.93, 1.11, 0.76, 0.86 and 1.00, respectively. The analysis of the confidence intervals for these various k values, permitted to conclude that the differential growth of the gland mass is isometric, of the mucous cells volume is positive, of the serous cells and duct are negative and of the stroma volume is isometric.