Inhalation of rod-like carbon nanotubes causes unconventional asthma. Mus musculus

Exposure to rod-shaped carbon nanotubes reveals novel innate immunity mediated asthma-like inflammation in mice. Inhalation of rCNT elicited a drastic infiltration of eosinophils into the lungs but only minor infiltration of neutrophils and lymphocytes. Transcriptomic study revealed remarkable effects of rCNT exposure, affecting almost exclusively pathways essential for innate immunity. Overall design: Mice were exposed to rCNT or tCNT for 4 h and sacrificed immediately or 24 h after the exposure. The total RNA was extracted from lung samples, hybridized to Agilent microarray and analyzed with BioConductor package Limma. Untreated mice were used as control.