title: Colocalization of NO and VIP in neurons of the submucous plexus in the rat intestine.
abstract: Since very few previous studies have carried out the quantitative analysis for the colocalization of nitric oxide (NO) and vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) in the submucous neurons in the rat digestive tract, we applied in vivo treatment of colchicine to enhance the immunoreactivity and examined the colocalization of NO synthase (nNOS) and VIP in neurons of the submucous plexus throughout the rat digestive tract. The density of nNOS-containing neurons in the submucous plexus in the stomach corpus (103+/-25 cells/cm(2), n=3) and that in the antrum (157+/-9 cells/cm(2), n=3) were significantly lower than those in small and large intestine. However no difference was detected in the cell density among duodenum (1967+/-188 cells/cm(2), n=3), jejunum (2640+/-140 cells/cm(2), n=3), ileum (2070+/-42 cells/cm(2), n=3), proximal colon (2243+/-138 cells/cm(2), n=3) and distal colon (2633+/-376 cells/cm(2), n=3). The proportion of nNOS-immunoreactive (IR), nNOS/VIP-IR and VIP-IR neurons to the total number of submucous neurons was examined. nNOS/VIP-IR neurons comprised 45-55% of total number of submucous neurons from the duodenum to the proximal colon, however those comprised 66.4+/-5.1% in the distal colon. The results showed that the dense distribution of nNOS-containing neurons was found in the submucous plexus throughout the small and large intestine, and large population of submucous neurons co-stored nNOS and VIP.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, Shiga University of Medical Science, Otsu, Shiga 520-2192, Japan.
authors.forename: Yoshihide
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chino
authors.forename: Masaki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fujimura
authors.forename: Kunio
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kitahama
authors.forename: Mineko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fujimiya
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003078:Colchicine / Q000378:metabolism; D007150:Immunohistochemistry; D007413:Intestinal Mucosa / Q000378:metabolism; D008297:Male; D009474:Neurons / Q000378:metabolism*; D009569:Nitric Oxide / Q000378:metabolism*; D019001:Nitric Oxide Synthase / Q000276:immunology; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D013368:Submucous Plexus / Q000378:metabolism*; D014660:Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D009569:Nitric Oxide; D014660:Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide; D019001:Nitric Oxide Synthase; D003078:Colchicine