Related Studies On Blood Motilin And Gastrin Levels In Preterm Infants

Objective: Preterm infants are a special group. Most of these infants suffer from feeding intolerance because of maldevelopment or various kinds of complications especially perinatal brain damage. And their nutrition situation becomes worse. Therefore, the feeding of preterm infants comes to be an important matter which influences the living and the quality of life. Hypoxic-ischemic brain damage (HIBD), due to asphyxia in perinatal period, is a kind of neonatal brain damage caused by partly or completely hypoxia, including neonatal asphyxia, neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) and neonatal intracranial hemorrhage (ICH), which is one of the important reasons that lead to acute death of newborns and disability of children. Newborns with HIBD usually accompany manifestations of gastrointestinal dysfunction such as gastric retention, emesis, abdominal distention and stress ulcer and so on. Both Motlin (MTL) and gastrin (GAS) are the most important gastrointestinal hormones. They relate not only to all the accommodation of gastrointestinal function, but also to nervous system and many other systems. According to detecting the blood MTL and GAS levels, we are hoping to explore the clinical significance about the gastrointestinal hormone secretion in preterm infants and preterm infants with hypoxic-ischemic brain damage (HIBD) ; and to observe therapeutic effect of erythromycin in small dose on preterm infants with feeding intolerance.Materials and methods: Objective: The observed were 50 cases of preterm infants. This 50 cases of preterm infants included 23 cases of preterm infants with HIBD, 27 cases of preterm infants without HIBD (including 18 cases of infants with feeding intolerance). The normal control was 20 cases of normal newborns. Methods: The plasma motilin and serum gastrin levels in 50 cases of preterm infants and the 20 cases of normal newborns were measured by radioimmunoassay (RIA). 4 ml vein blood of all the objects was taken on in the morning before being fed, 2 ml was poured into a precooling tube which contained 30μl 10% EDTA-2Na and 30μl Aprotinin, then was centrifugalized for 20 min at 4℃after intensively mixed, we took the plasma and reserved it at -20℃for MTL' s measurement; the other 2 ml blood was centrifugalized for 20 min at 4℃,then we took the serum and reserved it at -20℃for GAS's measurement. We adopted the ¹²⁵I MTL radioimmunoassay boxes offered by the East Asia Immuno-technology Institute of PLA General Hospital and ¹²⁵I GAS radioimmunoassay boxes offered by Beijing Furi Bioengineering Company, and operated according to the directions strictly; adopted the LDR4-8 4℃refrigerated centrifuge offered by Beijing Clinical Centrifuge Factory to centrifugalize the blood; The measuring apparatus is the EJ-2003 automatic 6-immuno-counter produced by Xi'an 262 Factory. The intervention of erythromycin in small dose of 3～5mg/(kg·d) was carried out on 12 cases of infants with feeding intolerance.Statistical treatment: We use SAS 6.0 package to deal with all the data, and adopt t-test procedure to make comparison between twogroups. Data is expressed as mean±standard variance (x|-±s). We adopt the fisher test of x² test to make the ratio comparison between two groups. P<0. 05 means that the analysis has statistical significance.Results:â‘ Compared to the normal control and the preterm infants without HIBD group, the blood MTL and GAS levels of preterm infants with HIBD were higher (P<0. 01 ) .â‘¡The blood MTL and GAS levels of preterm infants without HIBD were lower than the normal control (P<0.05). There was significant difference between the feeding intolerance and the feeding tolerance groups of preterm infants (P<0. 05), while there was no significant difference between the preterm infants without feeding intolerance and the normal control (P>0.05).â‘¢The effect of erythromycin therapy had significant difference between the interventional group and the control (P<0.05).Conclusion: The preterm infants have abnormal secretion of plasma motilin and serum gastrin. Detecting blood MTL and GAS levels is helpful to infer the possibility of feeding intolerance or the HIBD. There is good effect of erythromycin therapy to the preterm infants with feeding intolerance.