Immature oxidative stress management as a unifying principle in the pathogenesis of necrotizing enterocolitis: insights from an agent-based model.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is a complex disease involving prematurity, enteral feeding, and bacterial effects. We propose that the underlying initial condition in its pathogenesis is reduced ability of the neonatal gut epithelial cells (NGECs) to clear oxidative stress (OS), and that when such a NGEC population is exposed to enteral feeding, the increased metabolic OS tips the population toward apoptosis, inflammation, bacterial activation, and eventual necrosis. The multi-factorial complexity of NEC requires characterization with computational modeling, and herein, we used an agent-based model (ABM) to instantiate and examine our unifying hypothesis of the pathogenesis of NEC.

Methods

An ABM of the neonatal gut was created with NGEC computational agents inco

SUBMITTER: Kim M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3292758 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature