Study of the myocardial repercussions of cirrhosis due to biliary atresia: experimental model in young rats

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Bile duct atresia is a severe cholangiopathy of unknown etiopathogenesis that affects newborns and infants. The consequence of this condition is the progression to liver cirrhosis, one of the complications being cirrhotic cardiomyopathy, which has not yet been elucidated in the literature with regard to young animals. OBJECTIVES: To study cardiac morfological and histopathological changes in weaning rats submitted to obstruction of common bile duct. METHODS: Forty weaning Wistar rats will be submitted to common bile duct ligation for cirrhosis induction and divided in groups of 8 animals each according to the interval between surgery and sacrifice. Four control rats will be used in each group, the age at sacrifice being matched with that of the animals in the experimental group. Heart and liver will be harvested, hematoxilin-eosin and Masson stains will be used. In hepatic parenchyma, semiquantitative analysis of ductular proliferation, inflammatory infiltrate and collagen deposition will be performed. In the heart, histological analysis and semiquantification of collagen miocardiac deposition will be performed, in addition to measurement of wall thickness and internal diameter of the four heart chambers. In the statistical analysis, the parametric data will be analyzed through analysis of variance. Non-parametric data will be analyzed by the Kruskal-Wallis test. The equality hypothesis will be rejected for pd0.05. (AU)