Ultrastructural morphometric analysis of somatostatin-like immunoreactive neurones in the rat central nervous system after labelling with colloidal gold.

Nerve terminals of the rat median eminence, arcuate nucleus and spinal cord were examined in the electron microscope after post-embedding, colloidal gold labelling of immunoreactivity to somatostatin. Strong immunostaining was thus obtained together with adequate morphological preservation. Reactive boutons showed clusters of gold particles essentially confined to dense-cored vesicles. In the median eminence, the positive varicosities made up more than half of all terminals and averaged 735 nm in diameter. Those in the arcuate nucleus and spinal cord were much less numerous and generally smaller (575 nm). The labelled vesicles had mean external diameters of 109, 95 and 79 nm in the median eminence, arcuate nucleus and spinal cord, respectively. Calculations of the likely amounts of somatostatin within the vesicles of the median eminence and arcuate nucleus yielded values of 0.7 and 1.4 mM, corresponding to 190 and 230 molecules of the peptide, respectively. These data support a neurotransmitter or modulator role for somatostatin in the central nervous system.