Protective effect of ischemic preconditioning on the jejunal graft mucosa injury during cold preservation

Protection of intestinal graft mucosa during cold preservation is still an unmet need in clinical practice, thus affecting the success of transplantation. The present study investigates the ability of two ischemic preconditioning (IPC) procedures to limit cold preservation injury. Three groups of Sprague–Dawley rats were recruited (n = 11 each) as follows: the short IPC (SIPC) performed through 4 cycles of mesenteric ischemia of 4 min each followed by 10 min of reperfusion, the long IPC (LIPC) obtained by 2 ischemic cycles of 12 min each followed by 10 min of reperfusion, and the control group (C) without IPC. Grafts were then stored in cold histidine–tryptophan–ketoglutarate solution and samples were taken at 0, 3, 6 and 9 h lasting preservation. Both IPC groups showed an advanced degree of preservation with delayed development of graft mucosa damage, mainly in the crypt region. At the beginning of preservation, the graft mucosa in both IPC groups showed lower degree of mucosal injury index (MII) by 50% in comparison with C group. Specifically, a significant improvement of MII was observed after 3 h of preservation in the LIPC group (p < 0.05) in comparison with untreated C grafts. Significant atrophy of the intestinal mucosa in C group was found after 3 h of preservation (p < 0.01), in SIPC group the progress of atrophy was delayed to 6 h (p < 0.001), and in LIPC group only moderate decrease in that was found. A parallel increase of laminin expression with the MII rate after 6 and 9 h of preservation in comparison with the level at time 0 was observed in all grafts (p < 0.001 and p < 0.01, respectively). In both IPC groups the apoptotic cell (AC) rate was significantly reduced at the beginning of cold preservation (p < 0.05 both). Moreover, in both the SIPC and C groups, the progressive increase in MII rate connected with AC rate decrease was due to a predominance of necrosis. By contrast in the LIPC group, after an increase of nearly 50% in the AC rate at the 3rd hour, its level remained fairly constant during the further 6 h of preservation, thus probably preventing necrosis and improving graft viability.