Thermic transition and glycolytic capacity as critical events in the survival of rat liver slices after overnight cold hypoxic preservation

Abstract

Cellular survival and hypoxia–reoxygenation injury in overnight cold‐preserved liver slices (±20 h at 4°C) were investigated. Increased cell death after overnight cold hypoxia depended more on temperature than on the reoxygenation process itself. Fructose (at 50 mM) added before the onset of hypoxia improved survival at the end of 20 h of cold hypoxia over Krebs‐ or glucose‐treated slices. Such a protective effect by fructose was also seen during the normothermic (37°C) reoxygenation of previously cold hypoxic‐preserved slices, but only in the absence and not in the presence of tert‐butyl hydroperoxide, a model compound widely used to induce an oxidative stress. The protection by fructose was equivalent to that observed when liver slices were incubated in the University of Wisconsin solution (UW). Finally, the morphological study of haematoxylin and eosin (H & E)‐stained slices has shown cytoplasmic vacuoles during the reoxygenation step, which were more pronounced in UW‐treated than in fructose‐treated slices. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Evaluation of the hepatotoxic and hepatoprotective effect of Rwandese herbal drugs on in vivo (guinea pigs barbiturate-induced sleeping time) and in vitro (rat precision-cut liver slices, PCLS) models

“…agents capable to prevent and/or reverse the effects induced by an hepatotoxicant (CCl 4 , D-galactosamine, acetaminophen, peroxides,…), a series of models have been developed, either in vivo (histology, measurement of serum hepatic enzymes, barbiturate-induced sleeping time, prothrombine time, bromosulphaleine clearance) or in vitro (continuous cell lines, primary cultures of hepatocytes). Precision-cut liver slices (PCLS) preserve the tissular organization of the organ and represent an in vitro model closer to in vivo conditions than hepatocytes cultures (Morales et al, 1998;Vanhulle et al, 2001;Vickers and Fisher, 2004). As PCLS may be an interesting tool for the investigation of hepatotoxic and protective effects but also for bioguided fractionation schemes, their usefulness has been further investigated on the five ethnopharmacologically selected Rwandan herbal drugs, comparing to an in vivo test of liver function, barbiturate-induced sleeping time.…”