Among the three major types of sensory receptors innervating the airways and lungs, C-fiber endings and rapidly adapting pulmonary receptors (RARs or irritant receptors) are believed to be primarily responsible for eliciting the reflex responses in defending the lungs against inhaled irritants and toxins (1-3). The third type, slowly adapting pulmonary receptors (SARs or stretch receptors), plays an important role in regulating the respiratory volume-timing relationship (4), and is considered to be pure mechanoreceptor and relatively insensitive to chemical irritants. Several recent studies have attempted to uncover the mechanisms underlying the interaction between the pulmonary C fibers and RARs in the overall regulation of the defense reflex responses. Inhalation of cigarette smoke, a common inhaled irritant in human airways, has been shown to elicit irregular breathing pattern, cough reflex, and bronchoconstriction in a number of species including humans (5-9). Although it is believed that most of these responses are mediated through the activation of these two types of vagal afferents, the relative contributions of these two types of afferents to the emergence of these reflex responses are not known. In anesthetized animals (dogs, cats, or rats), spontaneous inhalation of one to two tidal breaths of cigarette smoke into the lungs via a tracheal cannula immediately elicited pulmonary chemoreflexes, characterized by apnea, bradycardia, and hypotension, known to be elicited by activation of pulmonary C fibers (1-3,6). After perineural capsaicin treatment of both cervical vagi to selectively block the conduction of capsaicin-sensitive C fibers, inhaled cigarette smoke no longer evoked any inhibitory effect on breathing (9). Conversely, an augmented inspiration, a reflex effect of activating RARs, was triggered within the first three breaths from the onset of cigarette smoke inhalation in > 85% of the rats studied (Figure 1). When the temperature of the vagus nerve was cooled progressively to 6-7 掳C to block the conduction of myelinated afferents, as indicated by the ablation of the apneic response to lung inflation, the augmented breaths evoked by the cigarette smoke inhalation were also abolished (9). Both the apnea and augmented breath evoked by inhaled cigarette smoke were completely abolished by bilateral cervical vagotomy. Similarly, augmented breaths were also elicited when other chemical irritants such as sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) (9), ammonia (NH 3 ) (9), acrolein (10), and wood smoke (11) were inhaled after the perineural capsaicin treatment of both vagi in anesthetized rats.It is interesting to note that augmented breaths were consistently elicited by inhaled irritants only after the conduction in bronchopulmonary C-fiber afferents are blocked by perineural capsaicin treatment of both vagi but were rarely seen when the same irritants were inhaled in the same animals with intact C fibers (9-11). These results suggest that both vagal bronchopulmonary C-fiber afferents and RARs are stimulated by these inhale...