TY  - JOUR
T1  - Effect of Vitex agnus castus L. essential oil on stereological architecture of adrenal glands in female mice
AU  - Hamidian, Gholamreza
AU  - Mahmoodi, Razagh
PY  - 2014
DA  - September
DO  - 10.5835/jecm.v2i31.5000068737
JF  - Deneysel ve Klinik Tıp Dergisi
JO  - J. Exp. Clin. Med.
PB  - Ondokuz Mayıs University
WT  - DergiPark
SN  - 1309-4483
SP  - 0
VL  - 31
IS  - 2
LA  - en
AB  - The adrenal gland is of critical importance for a plethora of biological processes andhas a pivotal role in different stages of life. The structure and function of adrenal can beaffected by steroid hormones. Vitex agnus-castus L. (VAC) is a phytosterogen shrub andhas been used in the treatment of many female conditions such as menstrual disordersin traditional medicine. So, this study was conducted to investigate the effects of VACessential oil on structure of adrenal glands. In this study 20 young adult female BALB/cmice were randomly divided into four groups: group 1 as control group, group 2 received75 mg/kg VAC, group 3 received 150 mg/kg VAC and group 4 which received 300 mg/kg VAC essential oil via gastric gavage for seven consecutive days. At the eighth day, animalswere euthanized and the adrenal glands were quickly removed, weighted and fixedin buffered formalin. The samples were processed by routine and standard paraffin embeddingand serially sectioned and stained by H&E. The total volume of adrenal gland,adrenal cortex and cortical zones were estimated by Cavalieri’s point-counting principleusing Weibel’s multipurpose test grid M42. Total number of cortical cell in each zona wasestimated by unbiased stereological methods. The results showed that adrenal gland masswere significantly decreased in group 4. It was also found that there are no significantdifferences in the zona glomerulosa volume and cell number among examined groups.The volume of cortex, zona fasciculata, zona reticularis and cell number of these regionswere significantly reduced in group 4 compared to other groups (P<0.05). Finally, it canbe concluded that VAC essential oil can affected adrenocortical structure. So, it should beconsidered with caution with high doses in traditional medicine.
KW  - Adrenal; essential oil; phytosterogen; stereo logy; Vitex agnus
UR  - https://doi.org/10.5835/jecm.v2i31.5000068737
L1  - https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/190403
ER  -