A Histological and Morphometric Assessment of the Adult and Juvenile Rat Livers after Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the most severe problems of modern medicine that plays a dominant role in morbidity and mortality in economically developed countries. Our experimental study aimed to evaluate the histological and morphological changes occurring in the liver of adult and juvenile mildly traumatized rats (mTBI) in a time-dependent model. The experiment was performed on 70 adult white rats at three months of age and 70 juvenile rats aged 20 days. The mTBI was modelled by the Impact-Acceleration Model-free fall of weight in the parieto-occipital area. For histopathological comparison, the samples were taken on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 14th, and 21st days after TBI. In adult rats, dominated changes in the microcirculatory bed in the form of blood stasis in sinusoidal capillaries and veins, RBC sludge, and adherence to the vessel wall with the subsequent appearance of perivascular and focal leukocytic infiltrates. In juvenile rats, changes in the parenchyma in the form of hepatocyte dystrophy prevailed. In both groups, the highest manifestation of the changes was observed on 5–7 days of the study. On 14–21 days, compensatory phenomena prevailed in both groups. Mild TBI causes changes in the liver of both adult and juvenile rats. The morphological pattern and dynamics of liver changes, due to mild TBI, are different in adult and juvenile rats.