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Updated: Nov 27, 2025

Assessment of Respiratory Function in Conscious Mice by Double-chamber Plethysmography
Published on: July 10, 2018
Peri-adolescent asthma: Acute impacts on innate immune response, corticosterone, and microglia in mice
Jasmine I Caulfield1, Kerri J Schopf2, Sonia A Cavigelli1
1Pennsylvania State University, Huck Institute for Life Sciences, 101 Life Sciences Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA; Pennsylvania State University, Department of Biobehavioral Health, 219 Biobehavioral Health Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA; Pennsylvania State University, Center for Brain, Behavior, Cognition, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
Abstract:
Asthma is highly comorbid with anxiety in youth. We investigated the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and microglia as mechanisms underlying asthma and anxiety comorbidity. We induced asthma symptoms in developing BALB/cJ mice with house dust mite (HDM) for airway inflammation and methacholine (MCH) for bronchoconstriction. On the last day of exposure, we analyzed samples at six timepoints. Lung IL-5 and IL-1β expression peaked 4 h after final HDM exposure. Circulating corticosterone was blunted in a sex- and treatment-specific temporal pattern. Hippocampal IL-1β expression and microglial area were marginally increased 24 h after MCH exposure. These results provide a foundation for further work investigating asthma-anxiety mechanisms.
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