Establishing an animal model of pulmonary arterial hypertension by immunizing rat with moesin / 中国免疫学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To investigate the possibility of establishing a new animal model of pulmonary arterial hypertension by immunizing rat with moesin, detecting the anti-moesin antibody and measuring the mean pulmonary arterial pressure ( mPAP ) . Methods:35 male SD rats were divided into 5 groups, namely, positive control group, blank control group, adjuvant control group, low-dose moesin(250 μg per time) immunized group and high-dose moesin(500 μg per time) immunized group.Each control group had 5 rats, while the 2 immunized groups had 10 rats respectively.The mPAP was measured and the pathological changes of the lung were studied at the endpoint of the study.Results:All the rats immunized by moesin produced anti-moesin antibody.At the endpoint, low-dose and high-dose immunized group had a significantly higher mPAP(20.6±2.9 mmHg, 20.7±2.3 mmHg, respectively) than blank control(15.5 ±0.6 mmHg, P=0.002, 0.001, respectively) and adjuvant control (17.2 ±1.6mmHg, P=0.03, 0.013, respectively).There was no difference between adjuvant and blank control(P=0.93).The mPAP of both immunized groups was not as high as the positive control(33.9±4.7 mmHg,P<0.001,P=0.001, respectively).Pathological study indicated that the immunized rats showed arterial wall thickening and muscularization, as well as inflammation around the vessel, which was similar to the positive control.Conclusion:Our pilot study showed moesin could induce rat to develop PAH.Moesin immunized rat could be a new animal model, which could mimic better the pathogenesis of connective tissue disease associated pulmonary arterial hypertension.