Intravital Assessment of Pre-capillary Pulmonary Arterioles of Type-1 Diabetic Mice Shows Oxidative Damage and Increased Tone in Response to NOS Inhibition.

Microvascular dilation, important for peripheral tissue glucose distribution, also modulates alveolar perfusion and is inhibited by loss of bioavailable nitric oxide (NO) in diabetes mellitus (DM). We hypothesized that DM-induced oxidative stress decreases bioavailable NO and pulmonary pre-capillary arteriolar diameter, causing endothelial injury. We examined sub-pleural pulmonary arterioles after acute NO synthase (NOS) inhibition with L-NAME in streptozotocin (STZ) and saline (CTRL)-treated C57BL/6J mice. Microvascular changes were assessed by intravital microscopy in the right lung of anesthetized mice with open-chest and ventilated lungs. Arteriolar tone in pulmonary arterioles (27.2 to 48.7 µm diameter), increased in CTRL mice (18.0 ± 11% constriction p=0.034, n=5) but decreased in STZ (13.6 ± 7.5% dilation p= 0.009, n=5), after L-NAME. Lung tissue DHE fluorescence (superoxide), inducible NOS expression, and protein nitrosylation (3-nitrotyrosine) increased in STZ mice and correlated with increased glucose levels (103.8 ± 8.8 mg/dL). Fluorescently-labeled fibrinogen administration and fibrinogen immunostaining showed fibrinogen adhesion, indicating endothelial injury in STZ mice. In CTRL mice, vasoconstriction to L-NAME was likely due to the loss of bioavailable NO. Vasodilation in STZ mice may be due to decreased formation of a vasoconstrictor or emergence of a vasodilator. These findings provide novel evidence that DM targets the pulmonary microcirculation and that decreased NO bioavailability and increased precapillary arteriolar tone could potentially lead to ventilation-perfusion abnormalities, exacerbating systemic DM complications.