Swelling Experiments of Dried Corneal Pieces Using Tritiated Water as Tracer—The Role of Corneal Mucopolysaccharides in Postmortem Corneal Clouding

To investigate the role of corneal mucopolysaccharides (MPS) to take up water, swelling experiments were conducted on dried rabbit corneas using cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) or testicular hyaluronidase as an inactivator of corneal MPS and tritiated water as a radioactive tracer. The curves of ³H-water uptake of dried corneas in various solutions were classified into 3 types: (i) a sleep rise followed by a slow one (in distilled water), (ii) a slow rise followed by a steep one (in physiological saline solution), (iii) a slow rise followed by a constant level or a slight fall (in the solutions containing CPC). The hyaluronidase-digested corneas in distilled water took up ³H-water at two-thirds in quantities of the water uptake of the controls. The water uptake of a dried cornea was obviously inhibited with CPC or the treatment with testicular hyaluronidase.

The importance of corneal MPS in postmortem corneal clouding was discussed on the basis of the present and previous data of the authors.