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Ramkumar M, Sharma S, Jacob TG, et al. The human trochlear and abducens nerves at different ages - a morphometric study. Aging Dis. 2014;6(1):6-16doi: 10.14336/AD.2014.0310.
Ramkumar, M., Sharma, S., Jacob, T. G., Bhardwaj, D. N., Nag, T. C., & Roy, T. S. (2015). The human trochlear and abducens nerves at different ages - a morphometric study. Aging and disease, 6(1), 6-16. https://doi.org/10.14336/AD.2014.0310
Ramkumar, Muthu, et al. "The human trochlear and abducens nerves at different ages - a morphometric study." Aging and disease vol. 6,1 (2015): 6-16. doi: https://doi.org/10.14336/AD.2014.0310
Ramkumar M, Sharma S, Jacob TG, Bhardwaj DN, Nag TC, Roy TS. The human trochlear and abducens nerves at different ages - a morphometric study. Aging Dis. 2014 Mar 18;6(1):6-16. doi: 10.14336/AD.2014.0310. eCollection 2015 Feb. PMID: 25657848; PMCID: PMC4306475.
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Aging Dis. 2014 Mar 18;6(1):6-16. doi: 10.14336/AD.2014.0310. eCollection 2015 Feb.

The human trochlear and abducens nerves at different ages - a morphometric study.

Aging and disease

Muthu Ramkumar, Saroj Sharma, Tony G Jacob, Daya N Bhardwaj, Tapas C Nag, Tara Sankar Roy

Affiliations

  1. Department of Anatomy, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi-110608, India.
  2. Department of Forensic Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi-110608, India.

PMID: 25657848 PMCID: PMC4306475 DOI: 10.14336/AD.2014.0310

Abstract

The trochlear and abducens nerves (TN and AN) control the movement of the superior oblique and lateral rectus muscles of the eyeball, respectively. Despite their immense clinical and radiological importance no morphometric data was available from a wide spectrum of age groups for comparison with either pathological or other conditions involving these nerves. In the present study, morphometry of the TN and AN was performed on twenty post-mortem samples ranging from 12-90 years of age. The nerve samples were processed for resin embedding and toluidine blue stained thin (1µm) sections were used for estimating the total number of myelinated axons by fractionator and the cross sectional area of the nerve and the axons by point counting methods. We observed that the TN was covered by a well-defined epineurium and had ill-defined fascicles, whereas the AN had multiple fascicles with scanty epineurium. Both nerves contained myelinated and unmyelinated fibers of various sizes intermingled with each other. Out of the four age groups (12-20y, 21-40y, 41-60y and >61y) the younger groups revealed isolated bundles of small thinly myelinated axons. The total number of myelinated fibers in the TN and AN at various ages ranged from 1100-3000 and 1600-7000, respectively. There was no significant change in the cross-sectional area of the nerves or the axonal area of the myelinated nerves across the age groups. However, myelin thickness increased significantly in the AN with aging (one way ANOVA). The present study provides baseline morphometric data on the human TN and AN at various ages.

Keywords: morphometry; myelin thickness; ocular motor nerves; stereology

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