Effect of Histamine on Gall-Bladder Evacuation.

Abstract

It has been shown in a previous article that 0.4% HCl in the duodenum causes the gall-bladder to contract on the basis of a humoral mechanism. 1 It has also been shown that histamine when injected intravenously causes the gall-bladder to contract, but the contraction is a mirror-image of the fall in blood pressure which led us to believe that the contraction was due to the fall in blood pressure.

It occurred to us that since it is well known that histamine subcutaneously causes gastric juice to be formed, such an injection might lead to gall bladder evacuation by the passage of the gastric juice into the duodenum. The gall-bladder of 5 normal men, 5 patients, and 10 dogs was visualized by the phenoltetraiodophthalein technique. One milligram of histamine was then injected subcutaneously and pictures of the gall-bladder were made at 30 minute intervals for one and a half hours. It was found that in the normal men the shadow was not changed in any way. In 2 of the dogs there was a slight decrease in the shadow, in the others it was not changed. In 3 of the 5 patients there was no change in the gall-bladder; in 2 there was a slight, but insignificant change; but in one of the patients, the gall-bladder emptied so completely within 30 minutes that only a narrow bandlike shadow remained.