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Purpose: Investigated the effect of intraluminal short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) on the intestinal mucosa in the presence of ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI)., Methods: Six blind sacs of the small bowel (3 at the jejunum and 3 at the ileum) were created in ten Wistar rats. The lateral sacs of both bowel regions were subjected to IRI (15/15 minutes) while the medial sacs were let free to receive blood supply. In the lateral sacs, it was injected either a solution containing SCFA (butyrate, propionate and acetate) or pure saline at the bowel lumen. No fluid was injected in the medial sacs., Results: Both at the jejunum and at the ileum the score of the mucosal injury was higher in saline than in control sacs. SCFA treated sacs showed lesser score at the ileum (p = 0.03) but were not significantly different at the jejunum (p = 0.83) when compared with saline sacs. It was found a significant greater number of neutrophils (p < 0.01) in the sacs treated with saline than in the other two sacs in both regions., Conclusion: SCFA protect the distal small bowel mucosa and diminishes infiltration of neutrophils to the gut lamina propria in IRI.

Purpose: To investigate the effect of oral glutamine alone or combined with short chain fatty acids (SCFA) in the intestinal adaptation of rats submitted to an massive enterectomy., Methods: After receiving 70% small bowel resection, 30 Wistar rats were randomized to received either standard rat chow (control group, n=10) or the same diet supplemented with 3,05% of glutamine alone (glutamine group, n=10) or combined with a solution containing SCFA (glutamine+SCFA group, n=10). Animals were killed on the 14th postoperative day. Mucosal weight, crypt depth, villus height, wall width, and the mucosal content of DNA, were assessed in basal conditions (resected gut specimen) and compared to the small bowel specimen collected on the postoperative day 14, at both jejunum and ileum sites., Results: All groups presented similar pattern in weight evolution. In all groups, both the morphological findings and the DNA content were significantly higher at the end of the experiment than in basal conditions, at both the jejunum and ileum. Except for the jejunum wall width that was higher in control group (808+/-95 micro) than in the other two groups (glutamine = 649+/-88 micro and glutamine+SCFA = 656+/-92; p<0.01), there was no difference among them in all variables at both intestinal sites after 14 days., Conclusion: All groups presented adaptation of the intestinal mucosa in the remnant gut. Glutamine combined or not with short chain fatty acids fails to influence the adaptive response of the small bowel.