Relationship of body weight and volume of liver. A morphometrical and stereological study

OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between high-fat diet induced obesity and hepatomegaly, and to investigate whether obesity, or hepatomegaly, or both are related to gender.

METHODS: This study was performed in 2003 at Ataturk University, Erzurum Turkey. Ten adult Sprague Dawley rats (5 male, 5 female) were fed with a diet that constituted highly of fat (30%) for duration of 3 months. Ten control animals (5 male, 5 female) were maintained with standard chow. At the end of the experiment, rats were sacrificed with Sevorane. The body mass index (BMI) of all animals was calculated. Finally, the removed livers were histologically processed and the liver volume was estimated with unbiased Cavalieri method.

RESULTS: The BMI was 4.8 ± 0.3 kg/m2 in males; 4.2 ± 0.25 kg/m2 in females (control group), and 5.92 ± 0.5 kg/m2 in males and 5.425 ± 0.40 kg/m2 in females (treatment group). The BMI of the 2 groups was significantly different (between both males and females, p<0.01; male to male, p=0.035; female to female, p=0.001). Moreover, weight values correlated with liver volume, especially in the treated females (r=1.000; p<0.01).

CONCLUSION: Thus, the results of the present study suggest that gender is a contributing factor for overweight and we found that hepatomegaly in women is more than men.