MORPHOMETRICAL ANALYSIS OF GASTRIN CELLS IN THE GASTRIC MUCOSA OF THREE-WEEK-OLD PIGS (Sus scrota domesticus) AND A COMPARISON WITH OTHER GASTRIC ENTEROENDOCRINE CELLS

摘要

The number and localisation of enteroendocrine cells from different parts of the gastric mucosa of three-week-old pigs were analysed. The basic method for the visualisation of enteroendocrine cells was immunohistochemistry and the results were compared to those derived through both the toluidine-blue staining for enteroendocrine cells and Grimelius silver staining methods. The greatest number of gastrin cells was in the pyloric mucosa with 124.66 ± 4.54 gas-trin cells per mm~2 in the antrum and 140.32 ± 5.30 per mm~2 in the pyloric canal. The highest density of gastrin cells in relation to the thickness of the gastric mucosa was in the middle third of the mucosa with approximately 50 % of all gastrin cells. The remaining gastrin cells were evenlydistributed in the upper and lower thirds of the mucosa. Cutaneous mucosa was negative for gastrin and other enteroendocrine cells. We found that the area of the small curvature, which has cutaneous and pyloric types of mucosa, had an average of 29.21 ±2.97 gastrin cells per mm~2 and that the areas with cardial and fundic mucosa had lower averages of 0.61 ± 0.14 cells per mm~2 and 1.14 ± 0.11 gastrin cells per mm~2, respectively. Morphometric analyses of the serotonin and somatostatin cells from thepyloric area, where there was the highest density of gastric cells, were performed. The numbers of both types of cells were much lower compared to the gastrin cells, with 17.7 ± 2.30 serotonin cells and 50.7 ± 2.76 somatostatin cells per mm~2 of mucosa. The results of the silver staining and the toluidine-blue staining only partially correlated with the results of the immunohistochemical reaction. While many more cells reacted to the Grimelius silver staining (153.5 ± 0.32 cells per mm~2) than to the toluidine-blue staining (51.15 ± 2.20 cells per mm~2), there were still considerably less of them in comparison with the number of cells that reacted immunohistochemically.