Differentiation and aging of the rat intestinal mucosa. II. Morphological, enzyme histochemical and disc electrophoretic aspects of the aging of the small intestinal mucosa.

At different times of day (08.00, 12.00, 16.00 and 24.00) the small intestinal mucosa of four month (adult) and 30 month (senile) old rats was examined histologically, by scanning electron microscopy, autoradiography, enzyme histochemistry and disc electrophoresis. In senile rats a villous atrophy is found histologically and an irregular architecture is found in scanning electron microscopy. The changes are essentially restricted to the proximal small intestine. The enterocytes of adult and senile rats show an identical enzyme histochemical picture. In the proximal small intestine of adult and senile rats, synchronous statistically significant fluctuations of the activity of alkaline and acid phosphatase were revealed in the disc electropherograms. Likewise statistically significant are the at all times of day low enzyme activities in the intestinal mucosa of senile rats as compared to the findings in adult rats. The fall in activity of alkaline and acid phosphatase in old rats is attributed to the numerical reduction of the enterocytes which is caused by the age atrophy of the intestinal mucosa. These findings are discussed in connection with results of our own studies of proliferation kinetics and those of other authors.