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Abstract
1. Paraquat (PQ) is an organic nitrogen heterocyclic herbicide that is widely used in agriculture throughout the world. Numerous studies have reported PQ intoxication on humans.
2. In this study, we established a rat lung injury model induced by PQ and evaluated the intervention effect of rapamycin on the model, exploring the pathogenesis of PQ on lung injury as well as therapeutic effects of rapamycin on PQ-induced lung injury.
3. A rat lung injury model was established by gavage of PQ, and rapamycin was used to treat the model animals with PQ-induced lung injury. Different physiological indices were measured through Western blot and real-time polymerase chain reaction to evaluate the effect of rapamycin on the PQ-induced lung injury.
4. The analyses showed that application of rapamycin could significantly reduce the lung injury damage caused by PQ, with lung tissue wet–dry weight ratio, pathological features, compositions in serum, protein in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and other indices being significantly improved after the injection of rapamycin.
5. It was inferred that the use of rapamycin could improve the PQ-induced lung injury through inhibiting the activity of mTOR. And we expected the use of rapamycin to be a potential treatment method for the PQ intoxication in future.
Acknowledgements
The authors appreciate the language editing by Edanz English Editing.
Declaration of interest
The authors disclose no conflict of interest.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81170068) and the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province (2013021059).
Supplementary material available online
Supplementary Tables S1–11 and Figures S1–7.