Histological studies of the effects of chronic administration of chloroquine on the inferior colliculus of the adult wistar rat

The effects of chronic administration of chloroquine commonly used for \nprophylaxis or treatment of malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus \nerythematosis on the inferior colliculus (IC) of adult male and female \nwistar rats was studied. Seventeen rats of average weight 184g were \nrandomly assigned into treatment (n = 10) and control (n = 7) groups. \nRats in the treatment group received 2mg/kg body weight of chloroquine \nphosphate dissolved in distilled water daily for 14 days. The control \nrats received equal volume of distilled water daily. The rats were fed \nwith rat pellets purchased from Ladokun Feeds Limited, Ibadan, Nigeria \nand given water liberally. They were then sacrificed on day fifteen of \nthe experiment. The inferior colliculus was carefully dissected out and \nquickly fixed in 10% formal saline for histological study. Findings \nindicate that rat in the treated group showed degenerative changes, \nvacuolations and reduced cellular population in the inferior \ncolliculus. Chronic administration of chloroquine has adverse effect on \nthe micro-anatomy of the inferior colliculus in rats. Chloroquine may \nhave adverse effects on the auditory sensibilities by affecting the \nmicro-anatomy of the inferior colliculus of the adult wistar rats. We \nrecommended further studies aimed at corroborating these observations.