The success of lung transplantation is threatened by the appearance of ischemia-reperfusion injury, which is characterized by increased vascular permeability. 5-Hydroxytryptamine (5-HT; serotonin) is known to produce microvascular leakage in the systemic circulation, but its possible role in ischemia-reperfusion injury after lung preservation has not been reported. In this work we measured the release of 5-HT during a 24-hour rabbit lung preservation, and the effect of methiothepin (antagonist of the majority of 5-HT receptors) and SB204741 (antagonist of 5-HT2B/2C receptors) on the modified capillary filtration coefficient (mKf,c) was evaluated at the end of this period. Our results showed that the highest release rate of 5-HT occurred during the first 15 minutes after the lung harvesting and progressively decreased in the following time intervals. The baseline mKf,c greatly increased after 24 hours of lung preservation, and this increment was partially reduced by methiothepin and even more by SB204741. We concluded that 5-HT may play an important role in the ischemia-reperfusion process after lung preservation.
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