Intestinal and liver changes after chronic ketamine and ketamine plus alcohol treatment

The effects of long‐term chronic ketamine treatment on the intestine and the liver were studied in the ICR mice which had daily intraperitoneal injection of ketamine at 30mg/kg per day for 7 months. The intestine showed no significant pathology after treatment but had a decrease of the positive sites of proliferative cell nuclear antigen in the mucosae of the intestines after ketamine and ketamine plus alcohol (added in the last month) treatment. No significant apoptosis (via TUNEL) nor necrosis (via lactic acid dehydrogenase) was detected in the intestines of all control and ketamine‐treated groups, with the exception of an increase of lactic acid dehydrogenase in the mucosae of the intestines of the ketamine plus alcohol group. In the liver, loss of glycogen was observed in animals after ketamine and ketamine plus alcohol treatment, in addition to the pathology reported in a previous work. The decrease in quantity of glycogen in the liver reflected either a failure of glycogen synthesis from glucose or an increase of glycogenolysis in the liver. Microsc. Res. Tech. 75:1170–1175, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.