Gastric emptying of radionuclide-labeled solid meal in beagle dogs using a scintigraphic method.

A scintigraphic method for in vivo radiotracers measurement is described to investigate the gastrointestinal emptying rate in beagle dogs. The proposed method has been applied to study the effect of a pharmacological compound in enhancing stomach emptying and involves the following steps: 1) 131I-labeled anion exchange resin grains preparation, as solid food markers to be ingested by the dogs; 2) continuous recording of gastric emptying evolution over a period of 5 h with fast data-gathering instrumentation employing small size and light-weight CsI scintillation detectors coupled to a photodiode, equipped with a lead shield and collimator; 3) comparison of results obtained with drugs to previous standard emptying curves. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prokinetic activity of a recent synthesized compound (BIMU 1).