It has been established that anterior pituitary TSH plays a major role in the regulation of thyroid function.
Besides this humoral factor, however, possibility of regulation through autonomic nervous system has been debated, without reaching a definite conclusion as yet. Many reports appeared on the augmentation of thyroid hormone secretion by the stimulation of the cervical sympathetic nerve. Effect of vagal stimulation on thyroid secretion, on the other hand, has scarecely been studied. The author therefore attempted to investigate the effect of vagal stimulation on thyroid function using radioactive iodine.
Dogs were injected with 100 microcuries of I
131 5 or 6 days prior to the experiments. Polyethylene catheters were inserted into each of the thyroid veins to obtain blood samples continuously. PBI
131 in the thyroidal venous blood was precipitated by TCA and the radioactivity counted in a welltype scintillation counter. Electrical stimulation of the nodose ganglion of the vagus was performed to determine the effect on PBI
131. At the end of each experiment, 2 USP units of TSH were injected intravenously to check whether the polyethylene catheter had been correctly inserted into the thyroidal vein, and, moreover, to determine the reactivity of the thyroid gland to this hormone.
Following results were obtained.
1) Control group : The upper limit of critical region for the significant increase was calculated from the degree of spontaneous fluctuations of PBI
131 in 10 experiments without any stimulation as follows ; PBI
131 concentration 1.49 times the pre-stimulation level, and PBI
131 output 1.29 times.
2) Group with stimulation of unilateral nodose ganglion : In 13 out of 14 cases, PBI
131 concent-ration increased from 1.60 to 4.84 times the pre-stimulation level, while PBI
131 output increased from 1.59 to 5.42 times in all 14 cases.
3) Group with partial section of vago-accessory myelencephalic rootlets of the vagus nerve followed by stimulation of the ipsilateral nodose ganglion 2 weeks later :
a) Section of AM and AH (AM rootlets contain chiefly fibers for stomach and intestine, while AH rootlets chiefly the cardioinhibitory fibers.) : PM
131 concentration increased form 1.60 to 3.99 times, while PBI
131 output increased from 1.61 to 4.22 times in all 6 cases.
b) Group with section of main stem (V rootlets) of vagus nerve : Neither concentration nor output of PBI
131 increased in 5 out of 6 cases.
c) Group with section of cranial 2/3 of main stem V : PBI
131 concentration increased 2.12 times, output 2.17 times in one case.
4) Group with extirpation of the cranial, caudal and stellate ganglia of the cervical, sympathetic nerve followed by stimulation of ipsilateral nodose ganglion 2 weeks later : In 5 out of 7 cases, PBI
131 concentration increased from 1.60 to 4.73 times, while output increased from 1.88 to 3.61 times in all 7 cases.
Stimulation of unilateral nodose ganglion fascilitated the secretion of thyroid hormone bilaterally, the increase in the ipsilatetal thyroid being always more pronounced. Such PBI
131 response to ner-vous stimulation, characterized by the prompt increase within 15 minutes, was in a sharp contrast with the response to intravenous TSH which always took more than 15 minutes for its appearance. From these results it was concluded that, neural regulation of thyroid hormone secretion mostly depends on fibers passing the main stem V among the original rootlets of vagus nerve, in addition to the already known cervical sympathetic nerves. Concerning the thyroidal blood flow, tendency of slight increase was observed in the group of vagal stimulation, and a marked increase in the post-sympathectomy vagal stimulation group, in contrast to the tendency of decrease in response to the sympathetic stimulation.
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