Parietal cell volume, hypergastrinemia, and gastric acid hypersecretion after small bowel resection. Experimental study.

One hundred and fifty male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into six groups: control, antrectomy, truncal vagotomy with pyloroplasty, intestinal resection, antrectomy with intestinal resection, and truncal vagotomy with pyloroplasty and intestinal resection. In the control group gastric acid secretion and plasma levels of gastrin were calculated. In the other five groups the same calculations were made 3 months after the corresponding operations. In all animals samples of the gastric wall were taken after specific dyeing of the parietal cells of these samples. In all samples prepared in this way, the variables of parietal cell volume per unit of muscularis mucosa were obtained by a morphometric method. The statistical survey using the levels of gastric acidity, gastrinemia, and parietal volumes of the six groups of animals showed that there is no relation between gastrinemia and gastric acid secretion, nor between gastrinemia and parietal volume, but that there is a significant correlation between gastric acid secretion and parietal volume. Those results suggest that the parietal cell volume in the rat decreases when the secreting capacity of the mucosa is decreased, and that the plasma levels of gastrin do not have a direct trophic effect on the parietal cells of gastric mucosa.