THE EFFECT OF ENDOTOXIN ON ABDOMINAL SYMPATHETIC GANGLIA

An attempt was made to examine experimentally in 37 guinea pigs two points of longstanding controversy: Can diarrhea or any instestinal lesions be produced by the injection of endotoxin into the regional abdominal sympathetic ganglia, and secondly, does endotoxin evoke a specific pathological response in these ganglia. An attempt was also made to correlate changes in the extramural ganglia, with alteration in the intramural nervous system. When endotoxin was given intraganglionicly a variety of non-specific toxic lesions were noted in the ganglion cells as well as the gliocytes. Alcohol injection, in an effort to provoke an irritative effect, produced a more destructive lesion. No concomitant changes were observed in the gut. Diarrhea could not be precipitated in any of these animals, nor in their intraperitoneally injected controls, which had no histologic abnormalities in the regional abdominal sympathetic ganglia. It is concluded, therefore, that the role of these ganglia should be minimized as a factor in enteritis, and that clinico-pathological correlation is difficult within the neurovegetative periphery. Pub. in Acta Neurovegetativa v27 n1 p121-30 1965 (Copies available only to DDC users).