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Published on: February 26, 2017
L-Arginine prevents air embolism-induced acute lung injury in rats
Shi-Jye Chu1, Tsai-Yu Lee, Horng-Chin Yan
1Department of Emergency Medicine, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China.
Objective:
Pulmonary air embolism, causing vessel obstruction and primary or secondary reactions of blood, can lead to acute lung injury. In addition, nitric oxide has been known to play a key role in various causes of lung injury. In this study we employed the isolated rat lung model to investigate the effects of l-arginine on air embolism-induced lung injury.
Design:
Randomized, controlled study.
Setting:
Animal-care facility procedure room.
Subjects:
Forty-two adult male Sprague-Dawley rats each weighing 250-350 g.
Interventions:
Infusion of air at the rate of 0.25 mL/min for 1 min into the pulmonary artery in isolated and perfused rat lung resulted in pulmonary hypertension and lung edema. Air embolism elicited a significant increase in microvascular permeability as measured by the capillary filtration coefficient, lung weight gain, lung weight-to-body weight ratio, pulmonary arterial pressure, and protein concentration of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid.
Measurements And Main Results:
Pretreatment with L-arginine (4 mmol/L) significantly attenuated the acute lung injury induced by air embolism as shown by a significant decrease in all of the assessed variables but did not alter the pulmonary arterial pressure (p < .05). The protective effect of l-arginine was blocked when N(G)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (5 mmol/L) was added. Pretreatment with N(G)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester exacerbated air embolism-induced lung injury.
Conclusions:
Our findings suggest that L-arginine can prevent air embolism-induced lung injury.
