Aspectos morfofuncionais da lesão pulmonar aguda induzida por sepse em ratos com hiperprolactinemia

Abstract

Sepsis is characterized as a systemic inflammatory process due to an infection, leading to acute lung injury, acute respiratory distress syndrome and multiple organs failure. Histopathological findings of sepsis are: interstitial and alveolar edema, accumulation of neutrophils and macrophages, hemorrhage, endothelial and alveolar epithelial injury and alveolar collapse. It is believed that prolactin, a hormone produced by pituitary lactotroph cells, interferes on the inflammatory process, sometimes stimulating it and sometimes inhibiting it. In addition to the direct relationship on lactation, this hormone has been observed to play important role on the modulation of the immune system, stimulating the cell proliferation and cell survival. In the present study, we sought to determine the morphofunctional aspects of compromised lung during sepsis induced by cecal ligation and perforation (CLP) in rats with hyperprolactinemia induced by sulpiride, a dopamine antagonist. The present study showed that pretreated rats with saline and subjected to CLP developed the morphogical pattern of sepsis such as increase in inflammatory cells with predominance of polymorphonuclear cells, interstitial edema and alveolar collapse. In addition, this study showed that sepsis induced by CLP produced a decrease in mean arterial pressure and decrease in ventilatory parameters such as tidal and pulmonary volume in unanesthetized rats. An interesting observation was that pretreated rats with sulpiride and subjected to CLP had a greater impairment in the morphological findings as well as an increase in the fall of the tidal volume during the ventilation analysis. The present study suggests that the hyperprolactinemia should be closely observed by a close relationship with the worsening of the inflammatory process caused by a pre-existing infection, which would result in increasing the number of deaths in septic patients.