Testosterone deficiency altered mortality and the expression profile of protease inhibitors in an elastase-induced mouse model of emphysema

To evaluate the effect of testosterone on the pathophysiology of COPD, we created porcine pancreas elastase (PPE)-induced emphysema mouse model in sham or orchiectomized (ORX) mice [sham/PBS, sham/PPE, ORX/PBS, and ORX/PPE]. We performed microarray analysis to compare the gene expression levels in the lungs of each mice group. The results demonstrated that the levels of genes encoding protease inhibitor activity in ORX/PPE mice were lower than those in sham/PPE mice. Total RNAs were extracted from the frozen lung tissue using TRIzol reagent. The samples represent a pool of RNA from 5 individual mice in each group. They were used for hybridization to the SurePrint G3 Mouse Gene Expression Microarray 8x60K v2.