[Influence of neoadjuvant chemotherapy on liver integrity and ischemic tolerance]

Abstract

The increasing interest in neoadjuvant chemotherapy of liver metastasis after colorectal carcinoma prior to resection has focussed surgical concerns to the influence of oncological chemotherapy on hepatic tolerance to intraoperative ischaemia. The present study was thus undertaken in order to produce first experimental data on liver function and morphology after neoadjuvant chemotherapy and subsequent ischaemic challenge in a rat model. Male Wistar rats were randomised to receive an intraperitoneal chemotherapy (CH) or placebo (PL) according to the same protocol. Afterwards the animals were subjected to 30 min of total hepatic ischaemia induced by Pringle's manoeuvre and subsequent reperfusion for 1 h or 24 h. Serum activities of hepatic enzymes showed no differences between CH and PL at any time. Bile flow, however, was found to be significantly reduced in CH. In contrast, post-ischaemic up-regulation of PUMA and cleavage of caspase3 was found to be more prominent in PL than in CH, while the antiapoptotic chaperone GRP78 revealed a higher expression in the latter. It is concluded that chemotherapy did not affect ischaemic tolerance of the liver in our model, but promoted a kind of preconditioning, that is likely to counteract cellular induction of apoptosis upon ischaemic challenge.