Objective: To find out whether or not blockade of somatostatin improves intestinal adaptation after small bowel resection.
Design: Laboratory experiment.
Setting: Teaching hospital, Spain.
Subjects: Eighty adult Wistar rats.
Interventions: Animals underwent intestinal resection or sham operation (n = 40 each) and were treated with a somatostatin antagonist either intermittently or continuously in three different doses (n = 8 each).
Main outcome measures: Bowel mucosal thickness, proliferation and concentrations of cAMP, somatostatin, insulin-like growth factor 1.
Results: Intestinal resection induced a proliferative and morphometric increase of the mucosa; however, the antagonist increased proliferation only in those animals given the highest dose. Intermittent doses induced a proliferative effect that was stronger than that in the three continuous groups. There was no relationship between trophic stimulus and insulin-like growth factor 1 or cAMP, but somatostatin concentrations increased after the intermittent course.
Conclusions: Somatostatin receptor blockade with an antagonist does not cause in normal rats an intestinal morphological adaptation process or increase it after resection; however, it did promote a proliferative stimulus in the crypts.