Discipline: Biological Sciences
Subcategory: Pollution/Toxic Substances/Waste
Ashleigh P. Porter - Fort Valley State University
Co-Author(s): Miranda Bustamante; and Laura Van Winkle, Ph.D. , School of Veterinary Medicine Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Cell Biology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA
Chronic air pollution exposure affects pulmonary development. Exposure to air pollution correlates to reduction of growth of the lung. People who live, work or attend school near major roads have an increased incidence and severity of respiratory health problems associated with air pollution exposures. Animal studies often provide early warning signs of environmental exposure. Mucous goblet cells in the rat lung mature in the postnatal period, are most abundant in the larger airways and, while rare within the intrapulmonary airways, can be increased by exposure to air pollution. Increases in mucous are associated with respiratory diseases such as asthma. In this preliminary study, we investigated mucous abundance and distribution in the lungs from rats exposed to Traffic Related Air Pollution (TRAP) during pre and postnatal lung development. Male and Female Sprague Dawley rats were exposed to TRAP or filtered air from gestational day 15 through postnatal day 32.
The distribution and abundance of mucin was indicated using a histological staining method Alcian Blue/ Periodic Acid Schiff, which is used to detect polysaccharides such as glycogen and mucin in tissue. The distribution and abundance of mucin were scored to determine relative abundance of mucin in the lungs of the rats. These rat lungs were compared to unexposed control rats. The amount of mucin on each slide was an average of an n of 3 with the rating scale of one through ten, with one being very minimum amount of mucin and ten being the greatest amount. There was no difference between the amount of mucin in the exposed and control rats. Additionally, there were no sex differences between female and male rats. In conclusion, this does not support the hypothesis that exposure of the developing lung to traffic related air pollution, at the dose and duration used in this study, results in an increase in mucin in the airways. However, this does not infer that traffic related air pollution does not have an effect on the development of the lungs. This work was supported by NIH/NIEHS/NHLBI funding at University of California, Davis and NSF HRD (#1238789) HBCU-UP Targeted Infusion grant to Prof. Seema Dhir at Fort Valley State University, Fort Valley, GA.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): This work was supported by NIH/NIEHS/NHLBI funding at University of California, Davis and NSF HRD (#1238789) HBCU-UP Targeted Infusion grant to Prof. Seema Dhir at Fort Valley State University, Fort Valley, GA.
Faculty Advisor: Prof. Seema Dhir, dhirs@fvsu.edu
Role: In the lab I performed a necropsy, embeded rat lungs in paraffin, sectioned the tissue with a microtome, stained the tissue and performed imaging. I gathered data and analyzed it. I also made a presentation in front of the entire group.