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Subacute Exposure to Gaseous Pollutants from Diesel Engine Exhaust Attenuates Capsaicin-Induced Cardio-Pulmonary Reflex Responses Involving Oxidant Stress Mechanisms in Adult Wistar Rats

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Abstract

Intravenous injection of capsaicin produces vagal-mediated protective cardio-pulmonary (CP) reflexes manifesting as tachypnea, bradycardia, and triphasic blood pressure (BP) response in anesthetized rats. Particulate matter from diesel engine exhaust has been reported to attenuate these reflexes. However, the effects of gaseous constituents of diesel exhaust are not known. Therefore, the present study was designed to investigate the effects of gaseous pollutants in diesel exhaust, on capsaicin-induced CP reflexes in rat model. Adult male rats were randomly assigned to three groups: Non-exposed (NE) group, filtered diesel exhaust-exposed (FDE) group and N-acetyl cysteine (NAC)-treated FDE group. FDE group of rats (n = 6) were exposed to filtered diesel exhaust for 5 h a day for 5 days (D1–D5), and were taken for dissection on day 6 (D6), while NE group of rats (n = 6) remained unexposed. On D6, rats were anesthetized, following which jugular vein was cannulated for injection of chemicals, and femoral artery was cannulated to record the BP. Lead II electrocardiogram and respiratory movements were also recorded. Results show that intravenous injection of capsaicin (0.1 ml; 10 µg/kg) produced immediate tachypneic, hyperventilatory, hypotensive, and bradycardiac responses in both NE and FDE groups of rats. However, these capsaicin-induced CP responses were significantly attenuated in FDE group as compared to the NE group of rats. Further, FDE-induced attenuation of capsaicin-evoked CP responses were diminished in the N-acetyl cysteine-treated FDE rats. These findings demonstrate that oxidant stress mechanisms could possibly be involved in inhibition of CP reflexes by gaseous pollutants in diesel engine exhaust.

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Data Availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article at relevant places. Data from the study will be made available by the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors convey their thankfulness to Prof. S. B. Deshpande and Prof. Sanjeev K. Singh from the Department of Physiology, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, whose earlier works have inspired the methodology of the present study. Further, the authors also acknowledge the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, for their inputs regarding the development and fabrication of the animal whole body exposure chamber.

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  1. Department of Physiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, 110029, India

    Ravindran Revand, Aditya Dontham, Swarnabha Sarkar & Asmita Patil

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The study was conceptualized by RR and AP. Data collection and data analysis were performed by RR, AD and SS. The first draft of the manuscript was written by RR, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Asmita Patil.

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The present study was approved by the Institutional Animal Ethics Committee of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India (Ref. No. 391/IAEC-1/2022 dated 17.03.2023).

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Revand, R., Dontham, A., Sarkar, S. et al. Subacute Exposure to Gaseous Pollutants from Diesel Engine Exhaust Attenuates Capsaicin-Induced Cardio-Pulmonary Reflex Responses Involving Oxidant Stress Mechanisms in Adult Wistar Rats. Cardiovasc Toxicol 24, 396–407 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12012-024-09842-9

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