Gastric secretion

Abstract

This review has attempted to cover some of the findings that have been made in the mechanism of gastric secretion in recent years. It is hard to offer any firm conclusions, whether at the level of stimulus, metabolism, or the terminal process of secretion. However, some generalizations may be possible. At least amphibian gastric secretion is stimulated by cAMP as a second messenger, with histamine presumably acting as the primary messenger. The resultant metabolic change is due largely to a direct stimulation of catabolism, which in dog appears to be the metabolism of hexose, through the glycolytic process, the hexose monophosphate shunt, and the Krebs' cycle with cytoplasmic reduction and mitochondrial oxidation of pyridine nucleotides. No evidence could be obtained for changes in high energy phosphate or for lipolysis. One would expect gastric mucosal membranes during secretion to contain an anion-restricted electrogenic H+ pump, but they in fact contain an ATPase stimulated by monovalent cations and are insensitive to ouabain. In addition, hog or dog gastric membranes have the vectorial properties of H+ absorption, Rb+ extrusion, and ANS fluorescence enhancement with the addition of ATP, as well as protein phosphorylation by 32P dependent on a K+ gradient.