Ghrelin endocrine cells in the human stomach during prenatal and early postnatal development

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the appearance, localization and density of ghrelin cells in the human stomach during prenatal development. For this purpose the antrum and corpus of embryos, fetuses and infants are stained immunohistochemically by the streptavidin-biotin technique. The presence of P/D1 cells at 11 weeks of fetal development, their highest density during the first detection and higher density in the corpus than in antrum, and their localization in the glandular base of stomach gland, all suggest that ghrelin plays a major role in the early stages of the developing stomach.