Chromatographic behaviour and post-mortem stability of somatostatin in the rat and mouse brain

Somatostatin-like immunoreactivity (SSLI) extracted from mouse and rat brains was found to be homogeneous and identical to authentic somatostatin (SS) in its chromatographic behaviour on reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). SSLI was found to be stable in mouse brain stored under post-mortem conditions simulating the handling of human autopsy material for up to 72 h. However, the amount of SSLI extractable by acetone-HCl was found to decrease over the first 10 h of post-mortem storage to about 25% of the control level, hence care must be exercised in choosing an appropriate extraction method for SSLI measurements in post-mortem brains.