Basic—Alimentary TractActivation of Human Enteric Neurons by Supernatants of Colonic Biopsy Specimens From Patients With Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Section snippets
Study Participants and Tissue Samples
Patients (n = 11; 7 diarrhea-predominant IBS [D-IBS], 4 with constipation-predominant IBS [C-IBS]; Table 1) were recruited in the Department of Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology of the University of Bologna and diagnosed according to the Rome II criteria.22 Biopsy samples were taken when the patients were symptomatic. Generally, patients were in their flare of symptoms, and colonoscopy was performed shortly after consultation. To evaluate the symptoms, each patient completed a modified
Results
Neuroimaging data were obtained from 76 surgical tissue specimens, 137 ganglia containing a total of 1207 neurons. There was no correlation between the number of neurons activated by the supernatants and the following parameters related to the patients operated on for colectomy: age (P = .068), gender (P = .910), diagnosis (P = .737), or colonic region of the surgical specimen (P = .223). In addition, neuronal activity evoked by the supernatants did not correlate with the age (P = .917) and
Discussion
The current study revealed 3 major results. First, mediators released from colonic mucosal biopsy samples of patients with IBS excited neurons of the human submucosal plexus. Second, the excitation was not related to IBS subtypes and may therefore represent a general feature in IBS. Third, IBS supernatant-evoked excitation was mediated by proteases, histamine, and serotonin, with proteases appearing to play a dominant role. Our results are consistent with the concept that an altered signaling
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Conflicts of interest The authors disclose no conflicts.
Funding Supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG Sche-267/7-1 (to M.S.); European Union 7th Framework Programme (IPODD) (to M.S.); Italian Ministry of University and Research (COFIN Projects to G.B., R.D.G.), R.F.O. funds from the University of Bologna (to R.D.G., V.S., G.B.), and a grant from the “Fondazione Del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna” (Bologna, Italy; to R.D.G.).