Physiologic variations of gastrin in serum of German shepherd dog

Gastrin is a pool of peptide hormones at different molecular weight secreted by gastric and duodenal mucosa during feeding and involved in the intake of proteins. Aim of present study was to establish the gastrin concentration in serum samples of 40 healthy German shepherd dogs belonging to 5 different age groups. A RIA commercial kit has been used, which has been validated for the animal species under study with preliminary dose-response experiments. Results obtained showed specificity of the procedure used for canine gastrin. The obtained reference range (14.6-61.8 pg/ml) resulted to be superimposable to the range reported in literature for italian mongrel dogs (15- 78.6 pg/ml). No differences related to sex have been observed (females 38.2 + 10.4 pg/ml males 38.2 + 12.7 pg/ml). The gastrin concentration resulted to be elevated in puppies aged 3-3.5 months (58 pg/ml) and stabilized in dogs from 7 months to 10 years on values ranging 27-33 pg/ml. Physiological and pathological role of this hormone is discussed. This study supports the critical evaluation of pathological variations of gastrin in serum of the dogs.