Abstract
The nervous system is the most challenging organ system to thoroughly assess in toxicity studies. It is anatomically complex, changes may occur within limited time frames, it may require special processing and special staining/immunohistochemistry, and it is prone to artifacts and spontaneous, background changes. Although there are regulatory guidelines for general examination of the nervous system, they typically do not offer sufficient guidance for detailed neurotoxicity studies. This chapter provides recommendations for general and detailed neurotoxicity studies including recommendations for sampling, special processing, embedding and staining, study design, and fixation methods to limit artifact formation. In addition, it explains potential changes that commonly occur in both the central and peripheral portions of the nervous system of laboratory animal species and introduces the terms that are commonly used to diagnose these changes in neurotoxicity pathology reports.
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Lee, J.S., Cramer, S.D., Butt, M.T. (2019). Pathology of the Nervous System. In: Steinbach, T., Patrick, D., Cosenza, M. (eds) Toxicologic Pathology for Non-Pathologists. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9777-0_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9777-0_7
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