Food restriction, refeeding, and gastric fill fail to affect emesis in musk shrews

Nausea and emesis are common side effects of gastrointestinal disease. Reports indicate that ghrelin and endocannabinoids, agents that stimulate appetite, also reduce emesis evoked by chemotherapy treatment, which suggests that stimulation of feeding inhibits the emetic system. In the following study we conducted a more direct test of this hypothesis by determining the impact of manipulating the motivation to eat on emesis, using food restriction and refeeding. Emesis was induced in musk shrews, a commonly used animal model for emesis research, using the cancer chemotherapy agent cisplatin (20 mg/kg ip), nicotine (2 mg/kg sc), or motion (1 Hz, horizontal, 4-cm displacement), because these treatments are known to target separate emetic pathways: gut vagal afferents, area postrema, and vestibular pathways, respectively. Twenty-four hours of food restriction was sufficient to stimulate food intake, and 1 h of refeeding filled the stomach. The results indicate that food restriction, refeeding, and gastric fill had no significant effects on the amount of emesis produced by any of the emetic treatments tested here. This suggests that, although activation of the emetic system might have prominent effects on food intake, neural controls for feeding behavior do not significantly affect the neural pathways for emesis. These results may have implications for how we treat patients who experience a constellation of side effects, including nausea and emesis, since stimulating appetite may not necessarily inhibit emetic pathways.