PRO-INFLAMMATORY EFFECT OF VOLCANIC ASH (VA) IN A COLITIS MODEL - IS THE VA LINKED WITH THE IBD EPIDEMIOLOGY ?

ORSINI DELGADO, M. LUCÍA; SAMBUELLI, ALICIA; PAPA GOBBI, RODRIGO; GIL, ANIBAL; NEGREIRA, SILVIA; HUERNOS, SERGIO; GONCALVES, SILVINA; BELLICOSO, MARICEL; CHAVERO, PAULA; TIRADO, PABLO; DOCENA, GUILLERMO H.

Barcelona

Congreso; 10th congress of ECCO; 2015

European Crohn´s and Colitis Organisation

Inflammatory Bowel diseases (IBD) are multifactorial inherited pathologies that result from the interaction of environmental, genetic and other unknown factors. IBD are characterized by a chronic and relapsing inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. Increased industrial pollutants and particulate matter have been related with an early debut, worsening and hospitalization of IBD patients. Due to high incidence of IBD in regions with active volcanoes, we hypothesized that volcanic pollution may trigger severe IBD flares. In this work we studied the effect of ash from the Puyehue Volcano (Neuquén, Argentina) in the inflammatory process of a colitis mouse model. BALB/c mice received drinking water with or without volcanic ash for 14 days. On day 7 mice were intra-rectally administered with different inflammatory stimuli: TNBS, Flagellin (FliC) or ethanol (EtOH), as vehicle control. Weight was daily monitored and on day 14 animals were sacrificed. Colon was removed and studied (weight, length, histology, immunofluorescence -ZO1- and gene expression by qPCR - IL1β, IL6, TNFα, Ccl20, IFNγ, Tbet, IL17A and RORγt). We found that the pro-inflammatory stimuli induced a marked weight loss in mice receiving drinking water with ash compared with mice receiving only drinking water or treated with EtOH. Colon showed a greater ratio weight/length in animals that received ash compared with controls (28,4±4,4 vs 31,3±2,4 for EtOH vs EtOH+ash; 28,3±0,1 vs 33,7±4,2 for TNBS vs TNBS+ash; and 24,7±4,01 vs 31,5±5,9 for FliC vs FliC+ash).The histologic activity index was: 1 vs 3 for EtOH vs EtOH+ash (p