some transgenic mice have several white spots on the liver. Is this a kind of cirrhosis or HCA?
1/4/2016 add
This liver is knocked out glucose regulation gene and several mice show these patterns.
this mouse is 20 week old with normal diet.
seems to be hepaptomegalic liver?
- white spots may be areas with lipogenesis (effect of insulin) this iseasy to test
- fibrosis?
age and diet of the rodent is important
check with the vet if there are parasites
good luck
To me this looks like multifocal necrosis. Some mice develop it after partial hepatectomy.
Should the mutation of these transgenic mice affect their liver anyway?
Difficult to tell...looks like necrotizing hepatitis?? Some viral infection?? or some mutation of genes causing liver damage??? Should correlate with clinical chemistry, clinical signs and histology.
@Bernat Soria Yes. it is hepatomegalic liver and glucose regulation gene Knock out mice. just 20week age and normal diet mice. Do you mean measurement of TG? TG increment of these mice liver has been reported before. I just want to what the white spot is. Thank you
@David Pereyra @Nagraj M Kulkarni I suspect knock out gene cause these symptom but at first I want to figure out this is phenotype of cirrhosis or not.
Thank you all.
The only way to determine whether this is cirrhosis or some other alteration (inflammation, etc.) is by having a pathologist evaluate this liver histologically.
Must perform pathologic evaluation. It's the better option to confirm the changes
What kind of transgenic mice are you using? This information could help. Anyway a simple histological examination would clarify the issue.
Histology will show the answer.
If you need fast tissue processing and H&E let me know. I'm local :)
Can you provide information on any possible clinical signs seen, clinical pathology etc to diagnose.
By definition of gross pathology, one should interpret this as multiple white spots in liver.
Diagnosis - as others mentioned it is difficult to arrive it unless we know some details. Apart from already mentioned, I can think about Clostridium piliforme (Tyzzer's disease) as well - but need confirmation with histology/special staining etc. Please let us know once you diagnose.
Would someone please prepare a couple of H&E sections of this liver, I'd be pleased to evaluate them... the suspense is killing me.
to what diet did you feed the mice with ???? some time it has an effect on such a cases
http://nexusacademicpublishers.com/table_contents_detail/4/213/html
I agree with all the previous comments. The histology will confirm, it looks like necrotic areas but this mice treated with any thing or this is only one case?
Deregulation in glucose metaboism in the liver might promote steatosis (non alcoholic fatty liver) and/or steatohepatitis (NASH). I work on mouse models of NAFL/NASH and that´s a tipical phenotype I observe. As you might know, lipids can be synthetize in the liver from sugars, a process called de novo lipogenesis. So if you induce a deregulation of hepatic glucose metabolism I will expect with high probability a deregulation in lipid metabolism.
By a simple H&E staining you can understand it, the dewaxing and rehydratation process will solubilize all the fat in your section and you will see white spots where the fat was. You can so evaluate if there is steatosis. In order to properly confirm it, you should perform an Oil Red O staining, which specifically stains the lipids. For this assay you need anyways cryoslides. Otherwise, molecularly, you can quantify triglycerols in your livers by mean of lipid extraction and quantification with easy-to-use kits, and compare with WT control mice. Just let me know if you need protocols.
I agree with what Aexander suggested. This is a clear sign of dispersed fatty change/steatosis, thus nonalcoholic fatty change. Macroscopically, you will not be able to appreciate it very well, but with histopathological evaluation by a Pathologist at the microscopic level, will be the ideal choice.
White spots in gross liver could be due to several factors. Actually the image it does not seem a white spot rather than light reflection. I can see similar changes in the intestine too. The only way you can confirm is by histologic examination with H/E stain or you can do some special stain to rule out for cirrhosis. The differential could be fatty liver (non alcoholic steatohepatitis ) hydrobic changes or hypoxic injuries due to chemical or drug or excesess cupper intake or Iron intake which all progress to cirrhosis. You need to due special stain such as Oil red/ sliver stain, to confirm more.
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