Blood Pepsinogen and Gastric Erosions in the Rat

&NA; A series of studies investigated the relation between blood pepsinogen and gastric erosions in the rat. Initial observations indicated that 20 hours of immobilization plus food and water deprivation yielded a higher incidence of gastric erosions in Wistar than in Sprague‐Dawley or Long‐Evans animals. Apparently there were no differences in the behavior of immobilized animals later found to have gastric erosions as compared with those without demonstrable lesions. In subsequent studies half of each strain was subjected to the immobilization and half served as controls. Plasma pepsinogen levels and the incidence of gastric erosions were recorded. No control animal showed signs of gastric erosions. Seven of 36 male, and 32 of 42 female experimental animals had from 1 to 18 erosions in the body of the stomach. Whereas there were no strain differences in susceptibility among males, Wistar females had a greater number of gastric erosions per animal than did Sprague‐Dawley females. Results with respect to strain differences in pepsinogen levels in relation to susceptibility remained equivocal. The pepsinogen levels of experimental animals with gastric erosions were higher than those of animals without gastric erosions in the case of males and females. There was no significant correlation between pepsinogen level and number of erosions per animal. Since no erosions were found in the stomachs of controls animals with high pepsinogen levels, it may be concluded that a high pepsinogen level, per se, is not indicative of the presence of gastric erosions, but rather appears to be indicative of susceptibility to gastric erosions. That the pepsinogen concentration in the blood plasma of rats with gastric erosions is greater than that in experimental animals showing no gastric disorder is consistent with the findings on humans, and suggests that there is at least this one common feature involved in the development of gastric erosions in the rat and duodenal ulcer in man.