Histopathology of spleen of rat (Rattus norvegicus) fed on doses of sodium fluoride

Water is indispensable and one of the precious natural resource of this planet. Ground water is an important source of water supply throughout the world. Fluoride poisoning arises from drinking fluoride rich ground water. Our present experiment was designed to study the efficacy of NaF on the splenocytes and its role in immunogenic response. The albino rats were taken for the experiment and randomly assigned into three groups of each of eight animals. First group and the second group were fed with lower (25mg/kg-bw/day) and higher (50mg/kg-bw/day) doses of NaF for 60 days and the third group rats were kept as control. Later on the animals were killed by cervical dislocation and spleens were dissected out and processed for light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. In the light microscope it was observed that fluoride causes shrinkage in the white pulp nodule and degeneration of red pulp. Scanning electron microscope also revealed the degeneration of many splenocytes in the fluoride treated group. The changes were more prominent in the rats treated with the higher dose of NaF. The finding suggests that NaF may play a key role in the activity of Ca ²⁺ ATPase and adversely affect the cell-cell and cell-matrix adhesion of splenocytes. It was concluded that NaF may adversely affect the structure and function of the spleen particularly due to the apoptosis of splenocytes and degeneration of red pulp in the rat leading to the reduced immunogenic response.