Histological Features of the Vomeronasal Organ in New Born Lambs (Ovis aries)

Abstract

Background: vomernasal organ is an auxiliary olfactory organ which located at the base of nasal septum composed of olfactory epithelium and being enclosed by cartilaginous capsule. The current study was aimed to investigate the histological structure of vomernasal organ in new born lamb.Methods: six heads of new born lamb were used for this study. The nasal cavity including the hard palate was sward up into four transvers sections. The sections were processed with paraffin embedding technique and tissue sections were stained with H&E stain. Conclusions:The rostral and middle portions of vomeronasals duct had medial and lateral walls with crescent shape lumen and enclosed completely by hyaline cartilage. The medial wall was lined with still diffentiating neuro-epithelium, possessed many of intra epithelial capillaries and composed of supporting, bipolar neuron & basal cells. The lateral wall was lined with differentiating respiratory epithelium. The lamina propriasubmucosa beneath both neuro and respiratory epithelia composed of ruminant of embryonic mesenchymal tissue contained newly formed glands, blood vessels and nerves. A significant (p<0.05) difference was recoded between the diameters of the rostral, middle portions and caudal portion of both gender and there were no differences between genders. The epithelial height of the neuro epithelia of the middle portion in both gender had significant value (p<0.05) in compare with epithelia of other portions.