Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jun 14, 2023; 29(22): 3440-3468
Published online Jun 14, 2023. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v29.i22.3440
Study of the roles of caspase-3 and nuclear factor kappa B in myenteric neurons in a P2X7 receptor knockout mouse model of ulcerative colitis
Henrique Inhauser Riceti Magalhães, Felipe Alexandre Machado, Roberta Figueiroa Souza, Marcos Antônio Ferreira Caetano, Vanessa Ribeiro Figliuolo, Robson Coutinho-Silva, Patricia Castelucci
Henrique Inhauser Riceti Magalhães, Department of Surgery, School of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Sciences, University of São Paulo, São Paulo 05508-270, Brazil
Felipe Alexandre Machado, Roberta Figueiroa Souza, Marcos Antônio Ferreira Caetano, Patricia Castelucci, Department of Anatomy, University of São Paulo, São Paulo 05508-000, Brazil
Vanessa Ribeiro Figliuolo, Robson Coutinho-Silva, Biophysics Institute Carlos Chagas Filho, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro 21941-902, Brazil
Author contributions: Magalhães HIR was responsible for the literature review and analysis and wrote the manuscript; Machado FA, Souza RF, Caetano MAF, Figliuolo VR, and Coutinho-Silva R helped with acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data and made critical suggestions about the writing; Castelucci P designed the study, helped with acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data, performed the critical interpretation and revised the manuscript for intellectual content; and all authors approved the final version of the manuscript.
Supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, No. 168015/2018-8; and the São Paulo Research Foundation, No. 2014/25927-2 and No. 2018/07862-1.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the pela Comissão de Ética no Uso de Animais da Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Universidade de São Paulo (Approval No. CEUA 2372300921).
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: All procedures involving animals were reviewed and approved by the Ethic Committee on Animal Use of the School of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science University of São Paulo (Approval No. CEUA 2841270120).
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at pcastel@usp.br. Participants gave informed consent for data sharing.
ARRIVE guidelines statement: The authors have read the ARRIVE Guidelines, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the ARRIVE Guidelines.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Patricia Castelucci, MHSc, PhD, Associate Professor, Associate Research Scientist, Lecturer, Department of Anatomy, University of São Paulo, 2415, Av. Dr Lineu Prestes, São Paulo 05508-000, Brazil. pcastel@usp.br
Received: February 27, 2023
Peer-review started: February 27, 2023
First decision: April 3, 2023
Revised: April 25, 2023
Accepted: May 12, 2023
Article in press: May 12, 2023
Published online: June 14, 2023
Processing time: 99 Days and 7.3 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: In the present study, we compared pathological changes resulting from 2,4,6-trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS)-induced colitis at two different time points after colitis induction. At both 24 h and four days post-inflammatory induction, there was a decrease in the number of myenteric neurons in the wild-type groups but not in the knockout groups. Morphometric and ultrastructural changes were also observed. In addition, our results confirm that neuronal death mediated by caspase-3 activation is related to purinergic signaling via the P2X7 receptor in the myenteric plexus of mice with TNBS-induced colitis.