Lipid peroxidation and antioxidative protection mechanism in rat lungs upon acute and chronic exposure to nitrogen dioxide.

This work was done to clarify the relation between the changes of lipid peroxidation and the activities of antioxidative protective enzymes in lungs of rats exposed acutely, subacutely, and chronically to nitrogen dioxide. It was confirmed that the activities of the antioxidative enzymes to protect cells from oxidative stress increased in an early phase, and then the activities decreased gradually. Lipid peroxides increased once in an early phase and then returned to the control level; thereafter, lipid peroxides increased gradually again. Lipid peroxidation as measured by ethane exhalation increased significantly with 0.04, 0.4, and 4 ppm nitrogen dioxide exposure for 9, 18, and 27 months, and a dose-response relationship was clearly observed. The temporal changes of lipid peroxidation varied inversely with that of the activities of antioxidative protective enzymes. From these results, it was suggested that the increments of antioxidative protective enzyme activities in an early phase were complementary effects to protect cells from damage by lipid peroxides which were increased by nitrogen dioxide exposure, and that the complementary effects are lost in later phases of life-span exposure. Finally, loss of such protective complementary effects might relate to some chronic diseases in lungs. Therefore, the temporal changes described above are important characteristics in chronic exposure of air pollutants.