[Experimental study of the regenerative potentialities of the cardiac and somatic musculatures]

Abstract

In rats a portion of the cardiac wall was ablated, auto-, homo- and heterotransplantation of the myocardium into somatic muscles of the femur was made and somatic muscles were autotransplanted into the heart wall. The material was treated by general histological and histochemical methods. Spindle-shaped "cardiac myoblasts" were formed of muscle fibres of the wound sites remote from sutures, polygonal "intermediate" cells often disposed in the shape of epithelioid strands were formed closer to sutures as well as in auto- and homotransplants. In heterotransplants and wound portions near sutures degenerating cells were prevailing. Regenerative processes manifested themselves in the wound and myocardium transplants as mitoses of cardiac muscular nuclei, formation of "cardiac myoblasts" and "intermediate" cells, mitotically dividing. However, no secondary differentiation occurred. When autotransplanting somatic muscles in the cardiac wall, unlike myocardium transplants, there occurred seondary differentiation of myoblasts and myosymplasts with formation of muscular fibres. In later terms muscular elements of transplants died and at the site of wound a scar was formed.