Department of Histology and Embryology, Medical Academy, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, LT 44307, Lithuania
2Institute of Cardiology of Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, LT 50009, Lithuania
3Laboratory of Molecular Oncology, National Cancer Institute, LT 08660 Vilnius, Lithuania
4Biological Research Center, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, LT 47181, Lithuania

Received 24 July 2018; Revised 26 February 2019; Accepted 8 April 2019; Published 24 April 2019

Copyright © 2019 Jūratė Stanevičiūtė et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Testosterone Dichloroacetate
The aim was to investigate the effect of dichloroacetate (DCA) on thymus weight, Hassall’s corpuscle number (HCs), and NKCC1 RNA expression in Wistar rats aged 4–5 weeks. They were investigated in the controls and DCA-treated gonad-intact and castrated males and females. The treatment lasted 4 weeks with DCA 200 mg/kg/day. At the end of the experiment, rat thymus was weighted, and its lobe was taken for the expression of NKCC1 RNA determined by the PCR method and of Hassall’s corpuscles by immunohistochemistry. DCA caused a thymus weight decrease in DCA-treated gonad-intact rats of both genders as compared with their controls (p < 0.05), and no such impact was found in castrated DCA-treated males and females. DCA caused an increase of the HCs in gonad-intact males (p < 0.05), and no such increase in the DCA-treated gonad-intact females was found. There was gender-related difference in the HCs when comparing DCA-treated gonad-intact males and females: males showed significantly higher HCs (p < 0.05); no gender-related differences were found in the castrated DCA-treated groups. The Slc12a2 gene RNA expression level was found to be significantly decreased only in gonad-intact and in castrated DCA-treated males. The authors discuss the gender-related DCA effects on the thymus.