Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2015 August, 236(4)

N-Acetylcysteine Inhibits Ventilation-Induced Collagen Accumulation in the Rat Lung

CHUANXI CHEN,¹ XIANGDONG GUAN,¹ DEBORAH A. QUINN² and BIN OUYANG¹

¹Department of Critical Care Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, P.R. China
²Pulmonary and Critical Care Unit, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Mechanical ventilation is the most important life supportive therapy for patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). However, increasing evidence from clinical studies suggests that mechanical ventilation can cause lung fibrosis, which may significantly contribute to morbidity and mortality. Recent studies also found fibroproliferation occurred in early stage of ARDS with poor outcome. We have hypothesized that mechanical ventilation-induced lung injury may be a major contributor to lung fibrosis, and antioxidant could be a potential therapeutic agent for the treatment to mechanic ventilation induced fibroproliferation. We therefore used Sprague-Dawley rats that were ventilated with large tidal volume (20 ml/kg) or low tidal volume (7 ml/kg). We analyzed the time course of collagen level in the lung and the effect of N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a thiol antioxidant, on mechanical ventilation-induced collagen accumulation. In addition, normal human lung fibroblasts (NHLF) were exposed to mechanical stretch, which mimics ventilator-induced lung inflation, to evaluate the collagen secretion in culture medium. We found that ventilation-induced collagen accumulation occurred even after 2-hour ventilation. Pretreatment with NAC (140 mg/kg) inhibited collagen accumulation in lungs of rats ventilated with large tidal volume. Moreover, mechanical stretch caused the accumulation of collagen in the culture medium of NHLF, the magnitude of which was decreased with the pretreatment with NAC (1 mM). These results indicate that mechanical ventilation can induce collagen accumulation within 2 hours. NAC alleviated the collagen accumulation induced by mechanical ventilation with high tidal volume. Therefore, NAC can be considered as a good candidate in preventing ventilation-induced lung fibrosis.

keywords —— antioxidant; collagen; mechanical ventilation; N-acetylcysteine; pulmonary fibrosis

© 2015 Tohoku University Medical Press

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Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2015, 236, 255-261

Correspondence: Bin Ouyang, Department of Critical Care Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, No. 58 Zhongshan Er Lu, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510080, P.R. China.

e-mail: binouyang@yahoo.com