Research Article Downregulation of Lung Toll-Like Receptor 4 Could Effectively Attenuate Liver Transplantation-Induced Pulmonary

Copyright © 2015 Xinjin Chi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Acute lung injury (ALI) is a severe complication of orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) with unclear underline mechanism. Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) has been identified as a key receptor mediating inflammation. We hypothesized that TLR4-mediated pulmonary inflammation may contribute to development of ALI during OLT. Patients with or without ALI were observed for serum cytokines and expression of TLR4 on peripheral blood polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs). Next, rats which underwent orthotopic autologous liver transplantation (OALT) were divided into sham and model groups. Pulmonary function and the level of TLR4 expression and cytokines were analyzed. Furthermore, the role of TLR4 inOALT-mediated ALI was assessed in rats treated with TLR4-siRNA before OALT. The PMNs TLR4 expression and the serum TNF