Differential biomechanical properties of mouse distal colon and rectum innervated by the splanchnic and pelvic afferents.

Visceral pain is one of the principal complaints of patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), and this pain is reliably evoked by mechanical distension/stretch of distal colon and rectum (colorectum). This study focuses on the biomechanics of the colorectum that could play critical roles in mechanical neural encoding. We harvested the distal 30 mm of the colorectum from mice, divided evenly into three 10-mm-long segments (colonic, intermediate and rectal), and conducted biaxial mechanical stretch tests and opening-angle measurements for each tissue segment. In addition, we determined the collagen fiber orientations and contents across the thickness of the colorectal wall by nonlinear imaging via second harmonic generation (SHG). Our results reveal a progressive increase in tissue compliance and pre-stress from colonic to rectal segments, which supports prior electrophysiological findings of distinct mechanical neural encodings by afferents in the lumbar splanchnic nerves (LSN) and pelvic nerves (PN) that dominate colonic and rectal innervations, respectively. The colorectum is significantly more viscoelastic in the circumferential direction than in the axial direction. In addition, our SHG results reveal a rich collagen network in the submucosa and orients approximately ± 30 degrees to the axial direction, consistent with the biaxial test results presenting almost twice the stiffness in axial direction versus the circumferential direction. Results from current biomechanical study strongly indicate the prominent roles of local tissue biomechanics in determining the differential mechanical neural encoding functions in different regions of the colorectum.