A new rat model of prenatal bowel obstruction: development and early assessment
Received 11 March 2009; received in revised form 9 June 2009; accepted 11 July 2009.
Abstract
Purpose
Although intestinal motility disorders often complicate the postoperative surgical management of newborns with congenital intestinal atresia, their pathogenesis remains unclear. Animal models of prenatal intestinal obstruction have been mainly developed in the lamb and the chicken. Despite new insights brought by these models, they have one or more limitations, such as high fetal mortality rates, high costs, long gestation periods, and an insufficient number of fetuses per litter. Moreover, some species are phylogenetically distant from mammals.
Methods
We developed a reproducible model of prenatal intestinal obstruction in the rat to study the histologic changes induced by the obstruction. We report, the technical devices and the first assessment of this atresia model in a didactic way to allow other researchers to easily reproduce the model.
Results
Prenatal intestinal obstructions in this study fulfilled all the macroscopic and histologic criteria usually listed by other models of prenatal intestinal obstruction that have been developed in other species. Furthermore with our model, we obtained a high success rate at a low cost.
Conclusions
We presented in this study a reproducible model of prenatal intestinal obstruction in the rat with the macroscopical and histologic features of prenatal intestinal obstruction.
ABSTRACT