The costo-uterine muscle of the rat. Fluorescence-histochemical and electron microscope studies during growth, pregnancy and oestrogen-treatment.

The costo-uterine muscle provides a skeletal attachment to the longitudinal myometrial layer of the uterine horn. In this study we investigated the possibility that the muscle is responsive to sex steroid hormones. In rats of 4 weeks of age, injected with oestradiol for 5 days, the cross-sectional area of nucleated muscle cell profiles was significantly increased. A significant increase in the sectional area of muscle cells was also demonstrated in the costo-uterine muscle of 16-week-old rats, on the 20th day of gestation, compared with non-pregnant rats in dioestrus and of the same age. In oestrogen-treated and in pregnant rats, there was also an increase in muscle cell length. As to the innervation of the costo-uterine muscle, in glyoxylic acid-treated whole-mount and cryostat preparations, we found not only perivascular nerve fibres, but also a few nerve fibres innervating the muscle proper. The pattern of innervation was unchanged after oestrogen treatment and during pregnancy. In the electron microscope, axonal varicosities were observed in the proximity of both vascular and non-vascular muscle cells.