Thermochimica Acta 497 (2010) 41–45 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Thermochimica Acta journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tca DSC examination of intestinal tissue following cold preservation Andrea Ferencz a , Klára Nedvig a , Dénes L ˝ orinczy b,∗ a Department of Surgical Research and Techniques, Medical School, University of Pécs, Kodály Z. str. 20, H-7624 Pécs, Hungary b Institute of Biophysics, Medical School, University of Pécs, Szigeti str. 12, H-7624 Pécs, Hungary article info Article history: Received 13 May 2009 Received in revised form 22 July 2009 Accepted 15 August 2009 Available online 25 August 2009 Keywords: DSC Intestine Cold preservation abstract The fact that small bowel is extremely sensitive to cold preservation had encouraged us to compare the conventional histology and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) methods in intestinal structural changes following experimental cold storage models. Our histological findings showed that longer cold preservation period caused more severe damage in structure of mucosa and crypts, but there were no changes in the muscular layer. According to our DSC data (transition temperature, calorimetric enthalpy) suggest that the thermal destruction of mucosa, muscular layer and total intestinal wall following preser- vation injury revealed significant differences compared to normal bowel structure. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Small bowel transplantation has progressively improved with modern immunosuppressive strategies. The deleterious effects of cold ischemia and reperfusion are major problems that affect clinical outcomes after small bowel transplantation. Intestinal ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) can lead to oxidative injury and loss of intestinal barrier function [1,2]. Although cold preservation is employed to reduce tissue degeneration, there is a progressive deterioration of cellular function over time [3,4]. The current clini- cal standard for small bowel preservation is intravascular flushing and cold static preservation using the University of Wisconsin (UW) solution. The qualitative as well as quantitative analyses are essential for the determination of potential mechanisms underly- ing injury and for the development of treatment strategies in the clinical practice [5]. Several studies demonstrated that cold preservation can be evaluated by the detection of various products resulting from injury, using laboratorial and histomorphological methods [6,7]. The injury of the gut is most often assessed by histological eval- uation on hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stained tissue sections. From different systems have been described the Park’s scoring system is the most suitable to be recommended as a standard scoring scale for histological evaluation of intestinal damage [8]. Advantages this scoring system is, that it grades the progression of morphologic injury from mild to severe, showing the best corre- lation with clinical outcome [9]. However, lack of this evaluation ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +36 72 536 261; fax: +36 72 536 261. E-mail address: denes.lorinczy@aok.pte.hu (D. L ˝ orinczy). that it does not describe the delicious details in the tissue struc- tures. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is a thermoanalytical technique which monitors small heat changes between a sample and reference as a function of temperature. As numerous articles illustrated DSC is a validly efficient method for the demonstra- tion of structural changes not only in the molecules, but in the structure of different tissue elements in biological systems [10–15]. To the knowledge of the authors, there is no previous study per- formed with the application of DSC in the field of monitoring the effect of cold preservation on the intestinal tissue. Besides the well- established morphological methods during intestinal preservation injury, the main goal of this study was to measure the structural changes by DSC technique following experimental small bowel cold storage. 2. Materials and methods 2.1. Animal preparation and anaesthesia Adult male Wistar rats (250–300 g) were purchased from the Laboratory Animal Centre of University of Pécs, housed under pathogen-free conditions and were fasted for 24 h preoperatively, but had free access to water. Rats were anesthetized with intra- muscular ketamine hydrochloride (0.01 mg g -1 of body weight) and diazepam (0.01 mg g -1 of body weight) (Richter Gedeon, Budapest, Hungary). All procedures were performed in accordance with the ethical guidelines of NIH and guidelines approved by the University of Pécs (BA02/2000-20/2006) to minimize pain and suffering of the animals. 0040-6031/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tca.2009.08.006