Abstract
Summary
We studied the effect of Brocresine on the gastric secretory response of denervated and innervated pouch dogs. Brocresine is a potent inhibitor of histidine decarboxylase. It has been shown that in the rat (2, 3) and perhaps in the human (4), this drug inhibits gastric secretory response to administration of exogenous gastrin, but not of exogenous histamine. In the present work we found that responses to exogenous gastrin, or gastrin-like synthetic pentapep-tide, or histamine, are not significantly altered by administration of Brocresine in either acute experiments, or over a period of several months of chronic dosage. The responses to feeding in a group of Brocresine-treated innervated pouch dogs were also not significantly altered over a period of several weeks. The results suggest that in the dog histamine may not be the final mediator of all gastric stimulation. This hypothesis is also supported by the fact shown (but not newly-discovered here) that the ratio of maximal response with gastrin to maximal response to histamine varies widely from 1 pouch dog to another. Response of the pouch to gastrin stimulation appears to be much more subject to differences (perhaps subtle) in surgical technique than response to histamine stimulation.
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