Effects of sucralfate or mild irritants on experimental gastritis and prostaglandin production

Abstract

Rats pretreated with dilute ethanol, dilute hydrochloric acid, or dilute sodium hydroxide had significantly less gastric mucosal damage when they were exposed 15 or 30 minutes later to strong irritants. The dilute agents, known as mild irritants, also caused an increase in the production of gastric mucosal prostaglandin E 2 at the 15- and 30-minutes dosing intervals. This suggests that the mild irritants are only effective in providing gastric mucosal protection when they increase gastric production of prostaglandin E 2. Sucralfate treatment also caused an increase in gastric mucosal production of prostaglandin E 2 at only the 15- and 30-minute dosing intervals. In contrast, pretreatment with sucralfate protected against the damaging effects of the strong irritants for at least 480 minutes. Therefore, prostaglandin E 2 may play a role in sucralfate's protective effect at short dosing intervals, but at longer intervals, when prostaglandin E 2 changes were not observed, sucralfate was still found to be very effective in reducing the severity of gastritis. This suggests that sucralfate acts, at least in part, through some other mechanism(s) besides increasing gastric mucosal prostaglandin E 2 production.