Pulmonary delivery of anorectic oxyntomodulin in rats: food intake suppression, reduced body weight gain and pharmacokinetics.

Background: Oxyntomodulin (OXM1-37) is an anorectic gut-secreting peptide with a promise to treat obesity, but its needle-free delivery has yet to be successful.

Results: Pulmonary delivery of OXM1-37, but not its C-terminal octapeptides, caused dose-related, transient 4-6 h food intake suppression in rats. At 0.

Short-term cigarette smoke exposure potentiates endotoxin-induced pulmonary inflammation.

Long-term cigarette smoke exposure is associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. However, the effects of short-term smoke inhalation are less clear, because it may adversely affect the lung only if underlying disease is present. To test this hypothesis, Syrian hamsters were passively exposed to cigarette smoke for 2 hours per day over a period of 3 days either before or after intratracheal instillation of low-dose (20 microg) Escherichia coli endotoxin.

Hyaluronan: the Jekyll and Hyde molecule.

Hyaluronan (HA) is a variable length, long-chain polysaccharide containing repeating disaccharide units of glucuronic acid and n-acetylglucosamine. Long considered a relatively inert component of the extracellular matrix, HA is now coming under scrutiny as a potential therapeutic agent for a number of different diseases, based on its recently discovered role in modulating inflammation. The effect of HA on the inflammatory response appears to be related to its molecular size, with larger polysaccharide chains having anti-inflammatory activity and smaller ones having proinflammatory properties.

Dichotomous effect of aerosolized hyaluronan in a hamster model of endotoxin-induced lung injury.

Inhalation of aerosolized low-molecular-weight (150-kDa) hyaluronan (HA) was previously shown by this laboratory to prevent experimentally induced pulmonary emphysema without associated toxicity. Nevertheless, other investigators have found that low-molecular-weight HA may be proinflammatory, prompting the authors to determine if aerosolized HA could possibly enhance pulmonary inflammation in a different model of lung injury involving intratracheal instillation of endotoxin to hamsters. Results indicate that exposure to HA following endotoxin administration significantly increased lung inflammation, whereas pretreatment with HA had the opposite effect.