Journal
PARTICLE AND FIBRE TOXICOLOGY
Volume 12, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
BMC
DOI: 10.1186/s12989-015-0110-8
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) via the German Center for Lung Research (DZL)
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) via the Cluster of Excellence REBIRTH
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The inhalation of airborne particles can lead to pathological changes in the respiratory tract. For this reason, toxicology studies on effects of inhalable particles and fibers often include an assessment of histopathological alterations in the upper respiratory tract, the trachea and/or the lungs. Conventional pathological evaluations are usually performed by scoring histological lesions in order to obtain quantitative information and an estimation of the severity of the lesion. This approach not only comprises a potential subjective bias, depending on the examiner's judgment, but also conveys the risk that mild alterations escape the investigator's eye. The most accurate way of obtaining unbiased quantitative information about three-dimensional (3D) features of tissues, cells, or organelles from two-dimensional physical or optical sections is by means of stereology, the gold standard of image-based morphometry. Nevertheless, it can be challenging to express histopathological changes by morphometric parameters such as volume, surface, length or number only. In this review we therefore provide an overview on different histopathological lesions in the respiratory tract associated with particle and fiber toxicology and on how to apply stereological methods in order to correctly quantify and interpret histological lesions in the respiratory tract. The article further aims at pointing out common pitfalls in quantitative histopathology and at providing some suggestions on how respiratory toxicology can be improved by stereology. Thus, we hope that this article will stimulate scientists in particle and fiber toxicology research to implement stereological techniques in their studies, thereby promoting an unbiased 3D assessment of pathological lesions associated with particle exposure.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available