Behaviours of pulmonary sensory receptors during development of acute lung injury in the rabbit

DOI: 10.1113/expphysiol.2006.036673Shuxin Lin1, Jerome Walker1,2, Ling Xu3, David Gozal4 and Jerry Yu1Departments of 1 Medicine4 Pediatrics, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292, USA 2 Department of Respiratory Therapy, Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY 40205, USA 3Department of Mathematics and Statistics, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, USA
They tested the hypothesis that oleic acid-induced acute lung injury activates pulmonary nociceptors, that is, C fibre receptors (CFRs) and high-threshold A fibre receptors (HTARs). Single-unit activity was recorded in the cervical vagus nerve and assessed before and after injecting oleic acid (75 µl kg–1 I.V.) into anaesthetized, open-chest, mechanically ventilated rabbits. Unit activities increased within seconds and peaked within a few minutes (from 0.3 ± 0.1 to 1.4 ± 0.9 impulses s–1 for CFRs and from 0.5 ± 0.1 to 1.7 ± 0.3 impulses s–1 for HTARs, both n = 8 and P < 0.05). These activities were sustained while pulmonary oedema developed and dynamic lung compliance decreased over the 90 min observation period. Activities in slowly adapting receptors and rapidly adapting receptors were also increased; however, their responsiveness to airway pressure stimulation decreased progressively. We conclude that pulmonary nociceptors are stimulated during acute lung injury. The dual nociceptor system, consisting of both non-myelinated CFRs and myelinated HTARs, may play an important role in the pathophysiological process of acute lung injury-induced respiratory responses.