[Retracted] Improving Small Intestinal Motility in Experimental Acute Necrotising Pancreatitis by Modulating the CPI-17/MLCP Pathway Using Chaiqin Chengqi Decoction

Figure 3

Effects of CQCQD and CCh on [Ca²⁺]_i in cells and contraction in strips of jejunum smooth muscles. Rats received 2 intraperitoneal injections of L-ornithine (Orn; 3.0 g/kg; pH 7.0) at 1 hour apart and controls received the same regimen of normal saline injections. In the treatment groups, rats either received single intraperitoneal injection of carbachol (CCh; 60 μg/kg) or 3 times oral gavage of chaiqin chengqi decoction (CQCQD; 20 g/kg) at 2-hourly interval begun at 24 hours after the first L-ornithine injection. Rats were sacrificed at 24 or 30 hours to isolate jejunum smooth muscle cell and strips for assessing intracellular calcium concentrations [Ca²⁺]_i and contraction, respectively. (a) Representative confocal microscopy images of Fluo 4-AM stained (×200). The lower left corner for each image is a representative morphological observation field of isolated smooth muscle cell (200x). (b) Fluo 4-AM fluorescence intensity (FI) for all experimental groups. (c) Example images of jejunum smooth muscle strip contraction for each experimental group. X axis represents time in seconds and Y axis represents (g) (d) Contraction tension. (e) Contraction frequency. All data are normalised according to saline injection group using arbitrary unit (AU). The bar of medium and sparse patterns represents rats sacrificed at 24 and 30 hours after the first L-ornithine/saline injection, respectively. vs. saline group; vs. L-ornithine group. Values are means ± SEM of 4 animals per group.

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