• Luiz Felipe Lopes Araujo, Arthur Rodrigo Ronconi Holand, Artur de Oliveira Paludo, Éverton Franco Silva, Luiz Alberto Forgiarini, Luiz Felipe Forgiarini, Mariel Barbachan E Silva, and Cristiano Feijó Andrade.
• Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Postgraduate Program in Pulmonary Sciences, Porto AlegreRS, Brazil, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Postgraduate Program in Pulmonary Sciences, Porto Alegre/RS, Brazil.
• Clinics (Sao Paulo). 2014 Feb 1; 69 (2): 128-33.

ObjectiveMost lung transplants are obtained from brain-dead donors. The physiopathology of brain death involves hemodynamics, the sympathetic nervous system, and inflammatory mechanisms. Administering methylprednisolone 60 min after inducing brain death in rats has been shown to modulate pulmonary inflammatory activity. Our objective was to evaluate the effects of methylprednisolone on transplanted rat lungs from donors treated 60 min after brain death.MethodsTwelve Wistar rats were anesthetized, and brain death was induced. They were randomly divided into two groups (n=6), namely a control group, which was administered saline solution, and a methylprednisolone group, which received the drug 60 min after the induction of brain death. All of the animals were observed and ventilated for 2 h prior to being submitted to lung transplantation. We evaluated the hemodynamic and blood gas parameters, histological score, lung tissue levels of thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances, level of superoxide dismutase, level of tumor necrosis factor-alpha, and level of interleukin-1 beta.ResultsAfter transplantation, a significant reduction in the levels of tumor necrosis factor-alpha and IL-1β was observed in the group that received methylprednisolone (p=0.0084 and p=0.0155, respectively). There were no significant differences in tumor necrosis factor-alpha and superoxide dismutase levels between the control and methylprednisolone groups (p=0.2644 and p=0.7461, respectively). There were no significant differences in the blood gas parameters, hemodynamics, and histological alterations between the groups.ConclusionThe administration of methylprednisolone after brain death in donor rats reduces inflammatory activity in transplanted lungs but has no influence on parameters related to oxidative stress.

28 keywords...

hide…