Nitric oxide decreases lung injury after intestinal ischemia

Terada, Lance S., Nancy N. Mahr, and Eugene D. Jacobson.Nitric oxide decreases lung injury after intestinal ischemia.J. Appl. Physiol. 81(6): 2456–2460, 1996.—After injury to a primary organ, mediators are released into the circulation and may initiate inflammation of remote organs. We hypothesized that the local production of nitric oxide (NO) may act to limit the spread of inflammation to secondarily targeted organs. In anesthetized rats, 30 min of intestinal ischemia followed by 2 h of reperfusion (I/R) did not increase lung albumin leak. However, after treatment withN G-nitro-l-arginine methyl ester (l-NAME), intestinal I/R led to increased lung leak, suggesting a protective effect of endogenous NO. The site of action of NO appeared to be the lung and not the gut because 1) after treatment withl-NAME, local delivery of NO to the lung by inhalation abolished the increase in intestinal I/R-induced lung leak; 2)l-NAME had no effect on epithelial permeability (51Cr-labeled EDTA clearance) of reperfused sm...