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Airway Caliber is Linked to Wall Thickness in Mice: Implications for Morphometry
Author(s) -
Meyerholz David K,
Beck Amanda P
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.2019.33.1_supplement.lb358
Subject(s) - airway , lumen (anatomy) , lung , small airways , pathology , caliber , medicine , anatomy , materials science , surgery , metallurgy
Morphometry of lung tissues often involves evaluation for changes in airway wall components such as collagen and/or smooth muscle. Alterations of these tissue parameters may be markers of diseases like asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or cystic fibrosis. The mouse lung is composed of airways that exhibit monopodial branching during development and these intrapulmonary airways are exclusively bronchioles (i.e. no intra‐pulmonary bronchi). As such, many airways can look alike for analysis by inexperienced observers. We tested if the airway caliber in wild type B6 mice could influence the detection and scoring of airway collagen or smooth muscle composition. We examined 15 lungs from archival blocks that came from studies with appropriate institutional approvals. Airway lumen diameter as well as wall thickness (sum of epithelium, smooth muscle and collagen) measurements of the 2 largest and 2 smallest airways were taken. These were then cumulatively analyzed for wall thickness (y axis) and airway lumen diameter (x axis). There was a significant positive slope (P=0.0017). We then grouped the data into large (lumen >130 microns) and small (lumen <130 microns) airways and compared the wall thickness, which was significantly thicker in the larger airways (P<0.0001). These data indicate that morphometry of murine airways requires analysis of similar sized airways for accurate assessment of changes and we speculate this finding will be relevant across other species as well. Support or Funding Information NA This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .