Malnutrition as a risk factor in relation to environmental air pollution: mechanisms of susceptibility

KURTZ, MELISA L

Mar del Plata

Simposio; LXIV Reunion Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Clínica; 2019

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación clínica

The global impact of malnutrition is astounding. Likewise, air pollution (gases and particulate matter-PM) represents a major health problem worldwide causing 6.5 million premature deaths every year. The synergism between the nutritional deficiencies and air pollution might contribute to increase the outcome on subpopulations at risk. Both factorshave been associated tochanges in inflammation and oxidative metabolism. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of environmental air pollutionon malnourished growing rats. Our laboratory has developed a Nutritional Growth Retardation (NGR) model in weanling male rats placed on a 20% restricted balanced diet during 4 weeks. Then, NGR and control (C) rats were intranasally instilled either with 1mg/kg BW of Residual Oil Fly Ash (ROFA, a PMsurrogate) or vehicle (PBS). 24 hours post-exposure1)bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL), 2)serumand 3)lung, heart and liver were obtained. Additionally, ROFA (1, 10,100 µg/ml) effect was studied in vitro on cultured alveolar macrophages (AM) from Cand NGRrats. In C and NGR animals, ROFA exposureinduced lung and liver inflammation confirmed by PMN recruitment, lungalveolar space reduction, augmentation of lymphocyte and binucleated hepatocytes. Furthermore, we found antioxidant enzymes mobilization with no changes in lipoperoxidation. On the contrary, ROFA exposure altered heart oxidative metabolism leading to lipid oxidativedamageonly in NGR animals. Even though we found histological and biochemical tissue alteration, systemic biomarkers of liver and heart injury were not observed.In vitro, C-AMexposed to ROFA induced superoxide anion and TNF-αaugmentation while, in NGR-AM cultures this response was attenuated.In summary, nutritional status plays a key role in responsiveness to ambient air pollution, as it was suggested by in vivo andin vitroassays.