A neurogenic factor affecting development of gastric and duodenal ulcers; on the chronic arachnoiditis.

Abstract

Summary From the standpoint of Maekawa'sψology, the causal mechanism of gastric and duodenal ulcer was investigated by histopathological examinations chiefly on changes in the spinal arachnoideal membrane and the spinal cord. Performing autopsies on four proven cases of gastric and duodenal ulcer, diffuse and granular proliferation of cells were periradicularly established at the funnel-shaped part of the arachnoideal membrane at the levels of the 7th and 8th thoracic root of all cases. In two of four cases, changes around the anterior roots were more remarkable than around the posterior roots, while, in other two cases, there was no difference between them. An apparent infiltration of round cells was also frequently found in epidural fatty tissue. Changes similar to the axonal reaction in the lateral horn cells of the spinal cord were extensively shown in the apical group of lateral horn and in the group in lateral funiculus. Characteristic features in the posterior root ganglion were provided by vacuolation, cell shrinkage, cell phantoms or cell shadows as well as proliferation of interstitial cells and capsule cells. Though changes of the nerve cells in dorsal motor nucleus of vagus were deteced only in slight degree, infiltraion of round cells around the dilated blood vessels about the dorsal motor nucleus of vagus was recognized in two out of four cases, in which the ulcer symptoms were striking and the progress acute.