morphometry of rat jejunal enterocytes number and height after l-arginine and l-name administration

background: nowadays nitric oxide (no) is an important signaling molecule which acts as a regulator of many physiological processes in many tissues including epithelial cell of gastrointestinal tract. in this study, we investigated the effects of l-argentine as a no precursor and l-name as a no inhibitor on epithelial cell number and height of jejuna epithelium in rats. materials and methods: in this experimental study, 40 adult female rats with 8 weeks age and 200-250 g weight were divided into 5 groups, containing 8 rats in each group. except the control group, the other groups received normal saline (2 ml/kg), l-argentine (200 mg/kg), l-name (20 mg/kg) and a mixture of 2 substances for l-argentine and l-name group intraperitonealy for 3 days. two weeks later, jejunum was expelled out and after fixation and tissue processing, the sections were stained with hematoxylin eosin method and the changes were assessed. cell number and height was evaluated using image tools iii microsoft software. statistical analysis was made by one-way anova followed by tukey post hoc test to evaluate the statistical significance between different groups. a value of p 0.05 was considered statistically significant. results: there was a significant increase in the cell number and height of jejuna epithelium in l-argentine group (p 0.05). whereas no significant difference was observed between l-name, l-arginine+l-name, normal saline and control groups. conclusion: the results demonstrated that l-argentine can result in proliferation of jejuna epithelial cells whereas l-name has no effect on these cells.