Morphometrical Analysis of the Thymus from Mice Submitted to Low Temperature

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Abstract
Thymic involution is a slow physiological process that can be accelerated by some pathological or experimental conditions. In this work we kept male mice under low temperatures in order to observe whether or not thymic involution would be promoted. For this purpose, we carried out a histometrical analysis of the thymus and observed that there was a decrease in both cortical and medullary regions of the thymic lobules. These changes paralleled a loss in the absolute and relative weights of the thymus. It was concluded that low temperatures induce thymic involution even in nonhibernating animals.