Effect of Hydrocortisone on Histochemically Demonstrable Catecholamines in the Sympathetic Ganglia and Extra‐adrenal Chromaffin Tissue of the Rat

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Abstract
Hydrocortisone acetate was administered intraperitoneally to newborn rats daily for 5 days, 40 mg/kg b.w. They were killed on the 6th day. Adult rats were given the same dose daily for 14 days and killed on the 16th day. Catecholamines were demonstrated by formaldehyde vapour induced fluorescence. In the 6‐day‐old rats treated with hydrocortisone there was a distinct increase in the size of the extra‐adrenal chromaffin bodies, in the number of fluorescent cells in them and in the intensity of the fluorescence of these cells, as compared with the controls. Hydrocortisone treatment also caused about a tenfold increase in the number of the small intensely fluorescent (SIF) cells in the superior cervical ganglion, the coeliac ganglion and the lumbar prevertebral ganglia of the young rats. The newly formed SIF cells were scattered single or in clusters of a few cells throughout the ganglia, including sites in which no SIF cells were normally present before hydrocortisone treatment. In the adult rats, hydrocortisone did not cause any dramatic changes in the sympathetic ganglia. The SIF cells were present in clusters in the same way as in the control ganglia but there was a tendency towards an increase in the number of SIF cells in the clusters. It is concluded that hydrocortisone causes in young rats a greatly increased formation of the SIF cells from poorly differentiated, weakly fluorescent stem cells, while proliferation of already existent SIF cells is less pronounced.