In patients requiring mechanical ventilation for acute lung injury or acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), tidal volume reduction decreases mortality, but the mechanisms of the protective effect have not been fully explored. To test the hypothesis that alveolar macrophage activation is an early and critical event in the initiation of ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI), rats were venti...

Abstract Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a serious and irreversible chronic lung disease. Bleomycin (BLM) an anticancer drug, which can cause severe toxicity. The main target of oxidative stress-induced injury alveolar epithelial cells, lead to interstitial fibrosis. present study investigated whether hispidin (HP), has excellent antioxidant activity, attenuates bleomycin-induced via ant...

Mastitis, inflammation of the mammary gland, is the most costly common disease in the dairy industry, and is caused by mammary pathogenic bacteria, including Escherichia coli. The bacteria invade the mammary alveolar lumen and disrupt the blood-milk barrier. In normal mammary gland, alveolar epithelial tight junctions (TJs) contribute the blood-milk barrier of alveolar epithelium by blocking th...

BACKGROUND Alveolar macrophages play an important role during the development of acute inflammatory lung injury. In the present study, in vivo alveolar macrophage depletion was performed by intratracheal application of dichloromethylene diphosphonate-liposomes in order to study the role of these effector cells in the early endotoxin-induced lung injury. METHODS Lipopolysaccharide was applied ...

Claudins are tetraspan transmembrane tight-junction proteins that regulate epithelial barriers. In the distal airspaces of the lung, alveolar epithelial tight junctions are crucial to regulate airspace fluid. Chronic alcohol abuse weakens alveolar tight junctions, priming the lung for acute respiratory distress syndrome, a frequently lethal condition caused by airspace flooding. Here we demonst...

Pulmonary microvascular and alveolar epithelial permeability were evaluated in vivo by scintigraphic imaging during lung distension. A zone of alveolar flooding was made by instilling a solution containing 99mTc-albumin in a bronchus. Alveolar epithelial permeability was estimated from the rate at which this tracer left the lungs. Microvascular permeability was simultaneously estimated measurin...

To study the rate and regulation of alveolar fluid clearance in acute pneumonia, we created a model of Pseudomonas aeruginosa pneumonia in rats. To measure alveolar liquid and protein clearance, we instilled into the airspaces a 5% bovine albumin solution with 1.5 microCi of 125I-human albumin, 24 h after intratracheal instillation of bacteria. The concentration of unlabeled and labeled protein...

Intra-alveolar fibrin deposition is a common response to localized and diffuse lung infection and acute lung injury (ALI). We hypothesized that the alveolar epithelium modulates intra-alveolar fibrin deposition through activation of protein C. Our objectives [corrected] were to determine whether components of the protein C activation pathway are present in the alveolar compartment in ALI and wh...

Hamsters exposed to 10 ppm NO2 for 5 hr once a week for 4 weeks while undergoing acute vitamin A deficiency showed much reduced epithelial cell regeneration in the terminal bronchioles. Quantitative analysis done by autoradiography and scintillation counting from lung tissues indicates much reduced cell kinetics occurring in terminal bronchiolar alveolar region. Alveolar necrosis was often obse...

Activation of the Fas/Fas ligand (FasL) system in the lungs results in a form of injury characterized by alveolar epithelial apoptosis and neutrophilic inflammation. Studies in vitro show that Fas activation induces apoptosis in alveolar epithelial cells and cytokine production in alveolar macrophages. The main goal of this study was to determine the contribution of alveolar macrophages to Fas-...