Chemical characterization of substance P-like immunoreactivity in primary afferent neurones.

Substance P-like immunoreactivity (SPLI) in rat dorsal root ganglia and dorsal spinal cord was characterized by high-performance liquid chromatography followed by radioimmunoassay. In spinal cord and ganglia, respectively, 87% and 64% of SPLI eluted with authentic SP. The remainder of the SPLI in ganglia eluted as a single peak which did not represent the sulphoxide of SP or any of its C-terminal fragments.