Liver histopathology of selected estuarine fishes from the Pranburi River estuary of Thailand

Abstract

Informative reviews on the environmental problems and pollutions in the estuarine are documented, and they found that aquatic organism has been radically affected. In this study, we thus assessed to establish baseline data on the liver histopathology collected from ten estuarine fishes living in Pranburi River estuary (PRE), Thailand, during 2016-2017. The fishes were divided into two distinct groups, including pelagic fishes (Ambassis vachellii, Ambassis nalua, Auriglobus nefastus, Chelon subviridis, Eubleekeria splendens, Gerres filamentous, Lutjanus russellii, and Nuchequula gerreoides) and demersal fishes (Butis butis and Upeneus tragula). Livers of all fishes were morphologically observed and then processed by standard histological techniques. This study revealed that the hepatic vacuolar degeneration occurred in all fish species and indicative of hepatocellular lipidosis. However, we noted that this lesion exclusively occurred in demersal fishes. Some similar reports on the small sizes of the melanomagcrophage centers (MMCs) were mainly scattered in the liver tissue of demersal fishes. Interestingly, our study showed that the blood congestion and proteinogenous plate in the central vein (30% prevalence in 2017) were first-detected in C. subviridis. All abnormalities seen in these liver samples indicated that all estuarine fishes, especially demersal fishes, might associate with the reduced functionality of liver as well as health status. Consequently, the environmental quality monitoring in PRE of Thailand should be additionally investigated in further studies.

Keywords

• estuarine
• histopathology
• liver
• teleost
• thailand