ABSTRACT
We hypothesize that exposure to airborne dust and endotoxin induces an upregulation of inflammatory cell function and associated pathologic changes in the respiratory system of pigs. A continuous flow exposure chamber was build to investigate the effect of airborne dust and endotoxin in a more controlled environment. So far, pigs have been exposed for 5 weeks to chamber background (controls), dust (11.3 mg/m3) and dust (10 mg/m3) and ET (2 mg/m3). From the BAL analysis, we concluded that dust and dust+ET exposed pigs tend to respond by day 17 of the experiment.
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