Maturation of the rat small intestine at weaning: changes in epithelial cell kinetics, bacterial flora, and mucosal immune activity.

The relationship between maturation of the small intestine and change in mucosal immune activity was examined in the DA rat during the weaning period from 12 to 30 days. Two stages of jejunal maturation were observed: an initial stage of morphological development and crypt proliferation (days 12 to 22), followed by a period of stabilisation (days 24 to 30). By day 22 of the initial phase, villi increased principally in width but not in length, crypt length increased, and crypt cell production rate increased from 0.5 (day 12) to 11.1 (day 22) cells/crypt/hour. Various measures of mucosal immune activity showed a biphasic response. Up to days 20 to 22, the weight of the mesenteric lymph node increased seven-fold (p less than 0.0001), counts of jejunal eosinophils and goblet cells increased 3- (p less than 0.0001) and 19-fold (p less than 0.0001) respectively, and mean serum rat mucosal mast cell protease II, released from mucosal mast cells, increased from 24 (day 12) to 313 (day 22) ng/ml (p less than 0.0001). After day 22, mesenteric lymph node weight stabilised, eosinophil count stabilised and goblet cells decreased, serum rat mucosal mast cell protease II decreased three-fold (p less than 0.0001), and mean jejunal count of intraepithelial lymphocytes increased from 26 (day 22) to 54 (day 24) cells per mm of muscularis mucosae (p less than 0.0001), before stabilising. These results demonstrated a close association between maturation of the small intestine and change in activity of the mucosal immune system.