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Updated: Aug 18, 2026

Immunostaining to Visualize Murine Enteric Nervous System Development
Published on: April 29, 2015
Morphological analysis of the relation between immunoglobulin A production in the small intestine and the enteric
Tatsuya Hisajima1, Yoshitsugu Kojima, Akira Yamaguchi
1Yokohama City University School of Medicine, Department of Neuroanatomy, 3-9 Fukuura, Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama-shi 236-0004, Japan. hisajii@med.yokohama-cu.ac.jp
Abstract:
To investigate the relation between the enteric nervous system and immunocytes, fecal immunoglobulin (Ig) A and the distribution of IgA-positive cells close to nerve fibers in the lamina propria around the crypts of the small intestine were examined after intraperitoneal injection of lipopolysaccharides (LPS). In mice, IgA in the feces 1 h (LPS1) and 6 h (LPS6) after LPS injection increased compared to that in the control group. In the ileum lamina propria of the LPS1 group, the number of IgA-positive cells close to the epithelial basement membrane was increased. In the LPS6 group, on the other hand, there was a significant increase in the number of IgA-positive cells close to both the basement membrane and the nerve fibers. Our data suggest that LPS induced an increase in the number of IgA-positive cells migrating to the nerve fibers, and that migration to the nerve fibers is as important as migration to the basement membrane for IgA production.
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