morphometry of rat jejunal enterocytes number and height after l-arginine and l-name administration

Background: nowadays nitric oxide (no) is an important signaling molecule which acts as a regulator of many physiological processes in many tissues including epithelial cell of gastrointestinal tract. in this study, we investigated the effects of l-argentine as a no precursor and l-name as a no inhibitor on epithelial cell number and height of jejuna epithelium in rats. materials and methods: in this experimental study, 40 adult female rats with 8 weeks age and 200-250 g weight were divided into 5 groups, containing 8 rats in each group. except the control group, the other groups received normal saline (2 ml/kg), l-argentine (200 mg/kg), l-name (20 mg/kg) and a mixture of 2 substances for l-argentine and l-name group intraperitonealy for 3 days. two weeks later, jejunum was expelled out and after fixation and tissue processing, the sections were stained with hematoxylin & eosin method and the changes were assessed. cell number and height was evaluated using image tools iii microsoft software. statistical analysis was made by one-way anova followed by tukey post hoc test to evaluate the statistical significance between different groups. a value of p<0.05 was considered statistically significant. results: there was a significant increase in the cell number and height of jejuna epithelium in l-argentine group (p<0.05). whereas no significant difference was observed between l-name, l-arginine+l-name, normal saline and control groups. conclusion: the results demonstrated that l-argentine can result in proliferation of jejuna epithelial cells whereas l-name has no effect on these cells.