New approaches to the quantitation of hypertrophy and hyperplasia in hepatomegaly.

A histological method utilizing the optical dissector principle has been developed for determining the contribution of hypertrophy and hyperplasia to the hepatomegaly induced by the peroxisome proliferator gemfibrozil. The optical dissector is a technique derived from the 'new stereology' and has been used to estimate the number of hepatocyte nuclear profiles, that are present in a reference volume of tissue. The overall changes due to hypertrophy and hyperplasia in the rat liver after gemfibrozil treatment, did not reach significance, although the zonal hypertrophy change did. This indicated that although there was a 20% increase in liver weight with treatment, the hepatomegaly was caused by a combination of hypertrophy and hyperplasia, neither of which, on its own, was significantly different from the control values. The distinction of hyperplasia from hypertrophy, using a purely histological method, will be useful in assessing whether treatment related sustained hyperplasia is occurring in the liver.