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Background Isoflurane may be protective in pre-clinical models of lung injury but its use in patients with lung injury remains controversial and the mechanism of its protective effects remains unclear. We hypothesized that this protection is mediated at the level of alveolar tight junctions and investigated the possibility in a two-hit model of lung injury that mirrors human acute respiratory distress syndrome. Methods Wild-type mice were treated with isoflurane one hour after exposure to nebulized endotoxin (n=8) or saline control (n=9) then allowed to recover for 24 hrs prior to mechanical ventilation (MV, tidal volume 15 mL/kg, 2 hrs) producing ventilator-induced lung injury. Mouse lung epithelial cells were similarly treated with isoflurane one hour after exposure to lipopolysaccharide. Cells were cyclically stretched the following day to mirror the MV protocol used in vivo. Results Mice treated with isoflurane following exposure to inhaled endotoxin and prior to MV exhibited significantly less physiologic lung dysfunction. These effects appeared to be mediated by decreased vascular leak, but not altered inflammatory indices. Mouse lung epithelial cells treated with lipopolysaccharide and cyclic stretch and lungs harvested from mice following treatment with lipopolysaccharide and MV had decreased levels of a key tight junction protein (i.e. zona occludens 1) that was rescued by isoflurane treatment. Conclusions Isoflurane rescued lung injury induced by a two-hit model of endotoxin exposure followed by MV by maintaining the integrity of the alveolar-capillary barrier possibly by modulating the expression of a key tight junction protein.

BackgroundThe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is characterized by the acute onset of hypoxemia and bilateral lung infiltrates in response to an inciting event, and is associated with high morbidity and mortality. Patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) are at increased risk for ARDS. We hypothesized that HSCT patients with ARDS would have a unique transcriptomic profile identifiable in peripheral blood compared to those that did not undergo HSCT.MethodsWe isolated RNA from banked peripheral blood samples from a biorepository of critically ill ICU patients. RNA-Seq was performed on 11 patients with ARDS (5 that had undergone HSCT and 6 that had not) and 12 patients with sepsis without ARDS (5 that that had undergone HCST and 7 that had not).ResultsWe identified 687 differentially expressed genes between ARDS and ARDS-HSCT (adjusted p-value < 0.01), including IFI44L, OAS3, LY6E, and SPATS2L that had increased expression in ARDS vs. ARDS-HSCT; these genes were not differentially expressed in sepsis vs sepsis-HSCT. Gene ontology enrichment analysis revealed that many differentially expressed genes were related to response to type I interferon.ConclusionsOur findings reveal significant differences in whole blood transcriptomic profiles of patients with non-HSCT ARDS compared to ARDS-HSCT patients and point toward different immune responses underlying ARDS and ARDS-HSCT that contribute to lung injury.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12931-019-0981-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.