In order to explore the morphological basis of the altered feeding behaviour of old rats, an ultrastructural investigation of the magnocellular neurons of the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN) was performed. Young and old male Wistar rats, 5 and 24 months old, respectively, and with each age group comprising 12 animals, were divided into 3 groups. The rats in Group I were used as controls (normally fed), the rats of Group II were fasted for 48 hours and in Group III the rats were fasted for 48 hours and then refed for 24 hours. The brains were fixed by perfusion and histological and ultrathin sections were obtained by routine methods. Common features of the magnocellular PVN neurons of young and old rats were abundant Golgi complexes and short fragments of RER localised at the cell periphery. In contrast to young rats, the PVN neurons of old animals showed deep indentations of the nuclear envelope and agerelated residual bodies. In both age groups fasting for 48 hours led to the expansion of the Golgi complexes and dilatation of RER cisternae. In contrast to those in fed rats, RER cisternae in the neurons of old fasted animals were situated between the nuclear envelope and the Golgi zone. Prolonged RER cisternae were distributed in the peripheral cytoplasm of refed old rats. Our observations suggest that at the ultrastructural level the process of ageing does not change the responsiveness of magnocellular PVN neurons to fasting-refeeding.
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