Improvement of mount preparations in showing myenteric nerve plexus from intestines of mice

摘要

Objective: The whole mount preparations of digestive tract is an effective experimental way to study the appearance and distribution of nerve plexus in digestive tract. Although myentric nerve plexus preparations technique was reported very early. But we have done experiment over and over during our research work in order to improve this traditional method and to meet the needs of our research work, we made some progresses in regular mount preparations after many experiments, which helped offer better situation in observing myentric nerve plexus. Methods: Five healthy male adult Kunming mice (20-30 g in weight) were used in this study. After intraperitoneal injection of muscle relaxant, with dislocation of cervical vertebra method, the abdominal cavity was exposed through abdominal median incision. After several steps of mount preparations the mucous layer and longitudinal muscle layer mount preparations with myentric nerve plexus were stripped under anatomical microscope. Immunohistochemical staining was also used in our study. Results: The mount preparation samples with myentric nerve plexus from intestines of mice showed positive SP immunoreaction. The positive cells were dark brown. Many of the cytons appeared circular and oval, while some appeared triangular or irregular. Conclusion: Our improved method is really a good method to show enteric nerve plexus. The method has many advantages and is particularly applied to small animals such as Kunming mice and BALB/c mice, weighing from 20 g to 30 g.