Aortic body tumours and hyperplasia in the rat.

The histologic features of aortic body neoplasia, hyperplasia, and normal aortico-pulmonary paraganglia were described for a series of 56 rats of several strains. Argyrophilic cytoplasmic granules were demonstrated in chief cells of the aortic body lesions, and electron microscopic examination disclosed the presence of electron-dense, membrane-bound granules in these cells. In a series of ageing rats, hyperplasia and neoplasia of the aortico-pulmonary paraganglia occurred more frequently in female WAG/Rij rats than in males of that strain, and more frequently than in males and females of the BN/Bi strain or of the (WAG X BN)F1 hybrid. No apparent causal relationship to chronic hypoxia could be shown, in that no correlation between the development of aortic body neoplasia or hyperplasia and cardiopulmonary disease was found. Aortic body lesions did not appear to occur as part of a multiple endocrinopathy syndrome, although hyperplasia and neoplasia of various endocrine organs occurred relatively frequently in the WAG/Rij strain.