Synopsis
Guanethidine is known to cause a loss of catecholamines from sympathetically innervated tissues and sympathetic ganglia in adult animals but its effect on newborn animals has not been examined.
Newborn rats were injected daily with guanethidine (20 mg/kg body weight) for 8 days. They were killed when 1 month-old along with untreated litter mate controls. Catecholamines were demonstrated in the iris, in the pineal body and in sympathetic ganglia, using the formaldehyde-induced fluorescence method.
In the guanethidine-treated rats there was a complete loss of fluorescent nerve fibres from the pineal body and an almost complete loss of similar fibres from the iris. The sympathetic ganglia were reduced to less than 10% of the control ganglia, and the number of nerve cell bodies per unit area was decreased in the ganglion remnants.
It is concluded that guanethidine causes, in newborn rats, an irreversible destruction of most sympathetic neurons, i.e. a chemical sympathectomy closely resembling that obtainable in newborn animals by injections of 6-hydroxydopamine or antiserum to nerve growth factor.
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Eränkö, O., Eränkö, L. Histochemical evidence of chemical sympathectomy by guanethidine in newborn rats. Histochem J 3, 451–456 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01014783
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01014783