INTRAUTERINE GROWTH RESTRICTION MODEL IN SHEEP: AN ANALYSIS OF RENAL GLOMERULAR AND VASCULAR FIBROSIS IN GROWTH RESTRICTED FETAL SHEEP

Abstract

Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) is a condition that marks offspring in the bottom 10 percentile of birth weight which can lead to increased perinatal morbidity and long term health consequences, with the long term effects remaining not fully understood. Consequences of a birth with IUGR can be immediate with low oxygen levels during gestation, increased risk for mortality following birth. and with negative effects on long term including increased risk of growth problems, infectious disease, and metabolic disease including but not limited to cardiovascular disease and impaired renal development of fetuses who experience IUGR. In this paper it is hypothesized that there is a profibrotic effect in glomeruli and renal vasculature of IUGR fetal sheep, and in order to test this hypothesis fetal sheep kidney tissue samples of either control or induced IUGR from heat exposure were stained in Masson Trichrome and analyzed under 20x zoom using ImageJ Fiji for blue to red ratio to determine the amount of collagen deposition in the tissue, measuring the overall fibrosis of the glomeruli within the kidney. The findings of this study suggest that there is not a profibrotic effect in glomeruli or renal vasculature, with fetal programming during development of the kidneys needing additional work to investigate potential consequences of IUGR and how it impairs renal development.