Histopathological assessment of the digestive gland of a freshwater snail (Lymnaea stagnalis) exposed to uranium

This dataset consists of measurements of the digestive gland in the freshwater snail Lymnaea stagnalis orally exposed to uranium. The objective of the study was to assess the morphological effects of uranium on the snail digestive gland by light microscopy. Laboratory-cultured L stagnalis were exposed to either synthetic or natural solid phases of uranium and a subset (6 controls and 6 exposed) were euthanized and fixed in 10% neutral buffered formalin for histopathological assessment. Slides were processed and stained with hematoxalin and eosin as per standard procedure (Luna 1968). The size of each sample, the length and width of digestive gland tubules (5 random glands per sample) and height of digestive cells (10 random cells per sample) were measured using Olympus CellSens camera software. (Luna LG. 1968. Manual of histologic staining methods of the armed forces institute of pathology, 3rd edn. McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.)