Abstract:Objective To establish an animal model of unified allergic airway inflammation(AAI)in upper and lower airways of mouse. Methods A total of 16 female BALB/c mice were randomly divided into model group (group A) and control group (group B), with 8 mice in each group. The mice of group A were intraperitoneally injected with 40ug ovalbumin (OVA) + 200 mg Al(OH)3 + 200 μL PBS solution on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th, and 13th days, with a total of 7 times. Starting from the 20th day, the mice were challenged with 10 μL OVA (1 mg/mL) intranasally, 3 times a week, for 3 consecutive weeks, and 24 h after the last intranasal challenge, with 2% OVA 5 mL aerosol inhalation for 5 consecutive days. In group B, normal saline was used instead of OVA and the process was the same as that of group A. The whole modeling cycle lasted 42d. After the last challenge, the symptoms, specific immunoglobulin E (sIgE) concentrations and pathological changes of nasal and pulmonary mucosae in both groups were evaluated and compared. Results The nasal and pulmonary symptom scores of group A were significantly higher than those of group B (P<0.01). The differences of nasal and pulmonary mucosal damage between the two groups at grades 1, 2 were statistically significant (P<0.01), but insignificant at grade 3 (P>0.05). OVA sIgE concentrations of nasal lavage, lung lavage and serum in group A were significantly higher than those in group B (P<0.01). The cell counts of nasal and pulmonary eosinophils (EOS) and goblet cell (GC) in group A were significantly higher than those in group B (P<0.01). In group A, the cell numbers of nasal EOS and GC were positively correlated with the pulmonary ones (r=0.775, P<0.01; r=0.723, P<0.05), respectively. Conclusion This method can successfully establish an AAI model with upper and lower airway consistency in three aspects of symptom, immunology and pathology in mice.
