Experiment studies of tumor necrosis factor changes in different tissues after stimulating vagus nerve

AIM: To investigate the effect of proinflammatory cytokine and an-ti-inflammatation cytokine on liver and lung tissues in rats with endotoxemi-a. METHODS: Male Wistar rats were randomly divided into 4 groups: group treated with stimulating vagus nerve, group receiving lipopolysaccharide (LPS) intravenous injection after transecting vagus nerve, group treated with sham operation and group treated with injecting LPS intravenously alone, and then measured the levels of TNF-αin liver and lung and those of cortisol and Alanine aminotransferase (ALT) in plasma. RESULTS: Compared with group treated with sham operation, LPS-treated groups showed a significant increase in TNF level, which was at most 15 fold higher than that of the former group. There was a significant decease in TNF level in group treated with stimulating vagus nerve, compared with both group receiving LPS intravenous injection after transecting vagous nerve and group treated only with LPS. In addition, we observed plasma cortisol level in LPS-treated group was much higher than other 3 groups and the plasma ALT level was greatly lower than that of group treated only with LPS. CONCLUSION: Stimulating vagous nerve can significantly decrease the production of proinflammatory cytokine and alleviate inflammation in rats with endotoxemia.