Thatiany de Souza Marinho; Marcia Barbosa Aguila & Carlos Alberto Mandarim-de-Lacerda

Obesity and its comorbidities are becoming epidemic in the Western world. Beta cell mass estimation is an important indicator to track the progression of insulin resistance/type 2 diabetes, particularly in experimental studies, where it can be performed with stereological tools in an unbiased way. In this work, we present a simple protocol that can contribute to doing the practice of estimating the mass of beta cells more frequent and reproducible. As with any quantitative study, the necessary precautions regarding sampling and randomness must be respected.

KEY WORDS: Pancreatic islet; Beta cell; Stereology; Obesity; Cell biology.

MARINHO, T. S.; AGUILA, M. B. & MANDARIM-DE-LACERDA, C. A. Pancreatic islet stereology: Estimation of beta cells mass. Int. J. Morphol., 37(4):1331-1334, 2019.