[Histochemical aspects of the differentiation of the gastric glands]

The Authors have studied some aspects of the differentiation of gastric mucosa, during the prenatal and postnatal development in man and mouse. They have demonstrated that in both species the first elements of glandular rudiments can be already recognised, owing to the richness of their mitochondrial store, as parietal cells, where oxireductase activities are already present. The functional differentiation in the membrane of such elements takes place later on: from the point of view of the function the parietal cell can then be considered as completely differentiated. Chief cells, on the contrary, define their morphological and functional characters starting from the fifth month of foetal life. At any rate, at least for the studied characters, the gland store of human gastric mucosa, at birth and in the adult, is exactly alike.