Morphological changes in the retina of ageing rats.

This paper deals with the morphological changes in the retina with ageing. The most significant result was a decrease in the thickness of the aged retina compared to that of the controls. Although all layers underwent reduction, the most affected were the outer nuclear layer (that was reduced to 90%) and the ganglion cell number (which was reduced to 40%). The surviving photoreceptors and ganglion cells showed structural changes. In the photoreceptors we found a disappearance of the outer segments, and in many instances the inner segment was in direct contact with microvilli from the pigment epithelium. In the ganglion cells we found an increase in Golgi apparatus, however, not at a uniform rate but to different degrees in the different cells.