Rationale. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in humans is associated with chronic cigarette smoking. At present only an acute model exists for lung fibrosis research. Objective. Describe a chronic animal model of lung fibrosis produced by cigarette smoke exposure. Methods. Six BALB/c mice have been exposed to two unfiltered cigarettes a day, 5 days a week for 6 months. Results. The phenotype was characterized by lung mechanics, histology and gene expression. Tissue elastance (compliance) and resistance was observed to be significantly elevated in the cigarette smoke-exposed mice compared to untreated controls. Histologically, airspace size in lungs of smoke exposed mice assessed by mean Linear Intercept and percent area of tissue was significantly decreased and increased respectively compared to controls. Inflammatory cell counting resulted in a significant increase in neutrophils in experimental mice. Assessment of Collagen type I clearly demonstrated a prominent interstitial deposition in smoke-exposed mice compared to controls. Conclusions. These data demonstrate that BALB/c mice are susceptible to the development of pulmonary fibrosis following chronic cigarette smoke exposure. This model could be an important contribution to the study of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in humans.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.98795 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Scott, Adrienne S. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Pathology.) |
| Rights | © Adrienne S. Scott, 2005 |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002326516, proquestno: AAIMR24796, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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