Morphological and quantitative study of multinucleated bodies appearing in rat seminiferous tubules after bilateral caput epididymectomy.

Adult Wistar rats were bilaterally caput epididymectomized and the effects on testicular germinal epithelium and formation of multinucleated bodies were studied and quantified at 2, 4, 7, 14, 21, and 28 days after surgery. Sham-operated and bilaterally efferentectomized animals served as controls. No alterations were found in sham-operated animals. Efferentectomized animals showed a progressive alteration of the seminiferous tubule epithelium and a (very occasional) presence of multinucleated bodies. Epididymectomized animals presented a progressive degeneration of the germinal epithelium, which was almost complete at 28 days. This epithelial degeneration was accompanied by the formation of multinucleated bodies from germinal cells, whose number and characteristics varied with the experimental interval. The multinucleated bodies described here resemble the multinucleated cells mentioned by other authors. They do not seem to be cellular; instead, they appear to be debris, since electron microscopic observations do not reveal a plasma membrane.