Abstract
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a highly prevalent gastrointestinal disorder characterized by periods of remission and exacerbation. Among the risk factors to develop IBS, psychosocial stress is widely acknowledged. The water avoidance stress repeatedly applied (rWAS) is considered effective to study IBS etio-pathogenesis. Otilonium bromide (OB), a drug with multiple mechanisms of action, is largely used to treat IBS patients. Orally administered, it concentrates in the large bowel and significantly ameliorates the IBS symptomatology. Presently, we tested whether rWAS rats developed neuro-muscular abnormalities in the distal colon and whether OB treatment prevented them. The investigation was focussed on the nitrergic neurotransmission by combining functional and morphological methodologies. The results confirm rWAS as reliable animal model to investigate the cellular mechanisms responsible for IBS: exposure to one-hour psychosocial stress for 10 days depressed muscle contractility and increased iNOS expression in myenteric neurons. OB treatment counteracted these effects. We hypothesize that these effects are due to the corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) release, the main mediator of the psychosocial stress, followed by a CRF1receptor activation. OB, that was shown to prevent CRF1r activation, reasonably interrupted the cascade events that bring to the mechanical and immunohistochemical changes affecting rWAS rat colon.