Morphological Study of Parafollicular Cells and the Parathyroid Gland in the House Shrew (Suncus murinus)

A morphological study of parafollicular cells in the thyroid gland and parathyroid gland of the house shrew (Suncus murinus) was made. The results indicated that (1) there were two pairs of parathyroid glands which were located in the upper part of the house shrew thyroid gland, (2) the volumes of the house shrew parathyroid glands ranged from 0.014 to 0.079 mm³, (3) the number of parafollicular cells along the follicles was largest in the upper part of the thyroid lobe, while no parafollicular cells were present in the isthmus, and (4) there were about 20 parafollicular cells per 100 follicular cells and 1.519 parafollicular cells per follicle. The number of parafollicular cells per 100 follicular cells was thus about 5 times larger than that in rats and the number of parafollicular cells per follicle about 2.5 times larger than that in rats.