Milestones in the Development of Chronic LPS-Induced Airway Disease

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) inhalation challenge is emerging as an experimental system for modeling environmental airway disease such as that seen in agricultural workers, and it can also serve as a model of environmental asthma. Mice exposed chronically to LPS develop all of the classical features of asthma including reversible airflow obstruction and inflammation, persistent airway hyperreactivity (AHR), and airway remodeling. Thickening and fibrosis of the subepithelial region of the airway wall is a consistent histologic feature of both environmental airway disease and of asthma that is directly related to the clinical severity of the disease. Lessons learned from such model systems may help to identify mechanisms that are fundamental to the development of chronic environmental airway disease and asthma.