BACKGROUND Electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve suppresses intestinal inflammation and normalizes gut motility in a mouse model of postoperative ileus. The exact anatomical interaction between the vagus nerve and the intestinal immune system remains however a matter of debate. In the present study, we provide additional evidence on the direct and indirect vagal innervation of the spleen an...

INTRODUCTION Impairment of the enteric nervous system has been suggested to occur within the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases. Thus, in the current study, we consider salsolinol (1-methyl-6,7-dihydroxy-1,2,3,4-tetrahydroisoquinoline, SAL) as a substance that can potentially induce myenteric neurodegen-eration. MATERIAL AND METHODS Male Wistar rats were subjected to continuous intrap...

The hypothesis that BMPs (bone morphogenetic proteins), which act early in gut morphogenesis, also regulate specification and differentiation in the developing enteric nervous system (ENS) was tested. Expression of BMP-2 and BMP-4, BMPR-IA (BMP receptor subunit), BMPR-IB, and BMPR-II, and the BMP antagonists, noggin, gremlin, chordin, and follistatin was found when neurons first appear in the p...

Neurons in the brain produce lamin C but almost no lamin A, a consequence of the removal of prelamin A transcripts by miR-9, a brain-specific microRNA. We have proposed that miR-9-mediated regulation of prelamin A in the brain could explain the absence of primary neurological disease in Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, a genetic disease caused by the synthesis of an internally truncated fo...

Food intake depends on a tightly controlled interplay of appetite hormones and the enteric (ENS) and central nervous system. Corticosterone (CORT) levels, which are mainly studied with regard to stress, are also increased during fasting. However, the role of CORT in the ENS remains elusive. Therefore, we investigated whether CORT modulates activity of enteric neurons and whether its intracellul...

BACKGROUND Women treated with gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analogs may develop enteric neuropathy and dysmotility. Administration of a GnRH analog to rats leads to similar degenerative neuropathy and ganglioneuritis. The aim of this study on rat was to evaluate the early GnRH-induced enteric neuropathy in terms of distribution of neuronal subpopulations and gastrointestinal (GI) functi...

In the 1970s, by using classic histological methods, close topographical relationships between special areas of enteric ganglia and capillaries were shown in the pig. In this study, by application of double and triple immunohistochemistry, we confirmed this neurovascular interface and demonstrated that these zones are mainly confined to nitrergic neurons in the myenteric and the external submuc...