Introduction: Congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) is a rare malformation in newborns. Amongst the various prenatal prognostic criteria, it is suggested that heart weight could be useful in evaluating the severity of lung hypoplasia. In this work we studied heart development in a rat model with nitrofen-induced CDH.
Material and methods: Pregnant female Wistar rats were treated on day 9 1/2 of gestation with 100 mg of nitrofen dissolved in 1 ml of olive oil. The control group was only treated with 1 ml of olive oil. The foetuses were delivered by caesarean section on day 21 1/2 of gestation. The weight of the foetuses was recorded. Under microscopy, the foetuses were dissected and the diaphragm was inspected. The wet weight of the heart and lung were recorded. The results are presented as a mean +/- standard deviation. A statistical analysis was made with the one-way ANOVA test on Ranks, and the Dunn test for post-test analysis. The statistical significance was set at a p < 0.05.
Results: The foetuses with CDH (n = 16) were lighter and had a smaller left lung/body weight ratio when compared with animals exposed to nitrofen without CDH (n = 18) and with controls (n = 12) (p < 0.05). The heart/ body weight ratio was smaller in foetuses exposed to nitrofen (p < 0.05), but we could not find any differences between nitrofen-treated treated foetuses with vs without CDH (n.s.).
Conclusions: In spite of the lung hypoplasia, we could not demonstrate the presence of heart hypoplasia in rats with CDH when compared to nitrofen-treated foetuses without CDH.