Effects of Perilla ketone on the in situ sheep lung

We studied the effects of three different doses (15, 20, and 25 mg/kg) of Perilla ketone (PK) on the blood-perfused in situ sheep lung while obtaining external measurements of lung transvascular protein flux. Lymph flow and lymphatic protein clearance increased significantly after all doses of PK. Severe pulmonary edema was confirmed by high postmortem wet-to-dry lung weight ratios and increased extravascular lung water from multiple indicator-dilution studies. Urea permeability-surface area product and effective diffusivity from multiple indicator-dilution studies also increased after PK infusion. Because we observed no evidence of increased capillary pressure or increased microvascular surface area after PK, we conclude that PK significantly increased pulmonary microvascular permeability. Certain aspects of the in situ PK response appeared to be dose dependent. The lungs responded rather quickly to high doses of PK, but an apparent latency period was noted with low doses of PK. Postmortem wet-to-dry lung weight ratios were always high but did not suggest dose dependence. However, times of postmortem measurements were not the same for all doses of PK. The external scan technique appeared to be sensitive to changes that occurred in the lung after PK. Externally detected albumin interstitial-to-plasma mass (mass I/P) ratios were substantially higher after PK than during control in situ studies. In some experiments, final mass I/P ratios increased above 4 approximately 2.0 h after PK compared with control values of 0.2 and 0.4. A delay time between injection and change in mass I/P slope was also observed, which decreased with increasing dose of PK. PK causes a permeability injury in the in situ sheep lung and provides a useful model for studying the sensitivity of permeability measurement techniques such as the external gamma-ray detection method.