Chronic hypoxia and rat lung development: analysis by morphometry and directed microarray

It is unclear how sublethal hypoxia affects lung development. To investigate the effects of chronic hypoxia on postnatal lung remodeling, we treated neonatal rats with FIO2 of 0.12 for 10 d and analyzed lung development by morphometry and gene expression by DNA microarray. Our results showed the neonatal rats exposed to hypoxia reduced body weight by 42% and wet lung weight by 32% compared with the neonatal rats exposed to normoxia. In the neonatal rats exposed to hypoxia, the radial alveolar counts were decreased to 5.6 from 7.9 and the mean linear intercepts were increased to 56.5 mum from 38.2 mum. In DNA microarray analysis, approximately half of probed genes were unknown. Chronic hypoxia significantly regulated expression of genes that are involved in pathogenesis of pulmonary hypertension and postnatal lung remodeling. Chemokine ligand 12, jagged 2 were among those upregulated; c-kit, ephrin A1, and Hif-2alpha were among those downregulated. The altered expression of those genes was correlated with the lung development and remodeling.