Impact of graft length on surgical damage after intestinal transplantation in rats.
BACKGROUND
Intestinal grafts greatly affect nutrition and immunology in the host. The growth of the recipient and incidence of graft-versus-host disease depend on graft length. A larger graft may affect the host immune system, but little is known about how the length of the intestinal graft severely affects surgical intervention. We developed a cervical small bowel transplantation (SBT) rat model that minimized technical variations using a cuff method and studied the effects of graft length on surgical damage in SBT.


METHODS
We transplanted a whole (70 cm) or partial (15 cm) intestine into a syngeneic rat combination of LEW (MHC haplotype: RT1(l)) to LEW and evaluated changes in perioperative hemodynamics and the endogenous endotoxin level. Natural killer (NK) cell activity in the peripheral blood and the immunologic response of the recipient spleen were also studied.


RESULTS
In the whole SBT model, body weight loss was more severe than in the segmental SBT model; the rats in the former model often died, while all in the latter survived indefinitely. The systemic blood pressure markedly decreased in the whole SBT group immediately after reperfusion. The proliferative activity of splenic lymphocytes stimulated by concanavalin A was also more severely inhibited in the former model than in the latter postoperatively. NK cell activity in the whole SBT rats declined more severely than the segmental SBT rats 3 days postoperatively.


CONCLUSIONS
The longer graft severely induced surgical intervention; and influenced host immunosuppression, resulting in the higher mortality in rats undergoing whole SBT.
Inoue
Seiichiro
S
Division of Organ Replacement Research, Center for Molecular Medicine, Jichi Medical School, 3311-1, Yakushiji, Minamikawachi, Kawachi, 329-0498, Tochigi, Japan.
Tahara
Kazunori
K
Sakuma
Yasunaru
Y
Hori
Testuo
T
Uchida
Hiroo
H
Hakamada
Yoji
Y
Murakami
Takashi
T
Takahashi
Masafumi
M
Kawarasaki
Hideo
H
Hashizume
Kohei
K
Kaneko
Michio
M
Kobayashi
Eiji
E
D000818:Animals; D001794:Blood Pressure / Q000502:physiology; D001835:Body Weight; D004731:Endotoxins / Q000378:metabolism; D007421:Intestine, Small / Q000637:transplantation*; D007694:Killer Cells, Natural / Q000276:immunology; D008213:Lymphocyte Activation / Q000276:immunology; D051381:Rats; D014180:Transplantation / Q000009:adverse effects* / Q000379:methods*; D014181:Transplantation Immunology / Q000502:physiology
D004731:Endotoxins