Xiaoqiao Zhang, Weifeng Ji, Guowei Zhang, Qingdong Meng

Department of General Surgery, General Hospital of Jinan Military Area, Jinan, People's Republic of China

Aims: The protective effect of ulinastatin(UTI) and breviscapine during ischemia-reperfusion(I/R) injury of small bowel transplantation(SBT) was proved in our previous research. The possible synergistic effect of these two agents was investigated here.  

Methods: Sixty recipients of rat SBT models were randomly divided into 5 groups (n =12): Normal control, with graft implanted immediately after harvest; the cold ischemia time of the other 4 groups was 4 hours. These 4 groups included: I/R control; UTI group, UTI was administrated to the recipients intravenously with dosage 50000U/kg/d; Breviscapine group, breviscapine was injected intraperitoneally for both donors and recipients since 3 days before operation with dosage of 25mg/kg/d, and the injection was kept for recipients after transplantation; and Combination group, both UTI and breviscapine were administrated in the same way of the UTI or breviscapine group. Variables included pathological score of graft I/R injury, tissue contents of Na-K-ATPase, xanthine oxidase (XOD), glutathione (GSH)and malondialdehyde (MDA).

Results: Administration of UTI and breviscapine may exert protective effect against I/R injury during SBT, manifested by decreased pathological score(Table 1), XOD and MDA content, higher GSH and Na-K-ATPase activity. Combination of UTI and breviscapine exerted stronger protective effect.  

Conclusions: Combinative application of UTI and breviscapine possess synergistic effect in graft protection against I/R injury during rat SBT.  

Table 1 Pathological scores of the grafts of each group

F=30.115, p<0.001