THE EFFECT OF OCTREOTID ON BACTERIAL TRANSLOCATION FROM THE GUT - AN EXPERIMENTAL-STUDY

Octreotid (OC) is a somatostatin (ST) analog which is being increasing ly used during the management of various gastrointestinal disorders, T his study was undertaken to assess the probable effects of OC on intra intestinal microflora and bacterial translocation, To our knowledge, n o previous work has addressed this issue, Ten rats forming the study g roup were injected 20 mu g/kg of OC subcutaneously for seven days, A c ontrol group (n=10) received an equal volume of isotonic saline for se ven days, All animals were sacrificed on the eighth day and tissue cul tures were obtained from the mesenteric lymph nodes, liver, and spleen , Cultures were also made from the caecal content and a piece of termi nal ileum was removed for histopathological examination, For statistic al analysis, Mann Whitney-U, and Fisher's exact tests were used, Caeca l bacterial content, and bacterial translocation were found to be sign ificantly increased in the study group in comparison to the control gr oup (p<0.05). Among the study group, there was also a statistically si gnificant increase in the caecal bacterial content in rats with eviden ce of bacterial translocation (p<0.05). Histopathological evaluation d rew a great deal of attention to submucosal edema present in the study group, OC significantly increases bacterial overgrowth, and transloca tion in rats, Studies on humans are needed to demonstrate similar clin ical effects of OC.