Purpose: To build a murine model for tobacco smoke and electronic cigarette vapor exposure to characterize the inflammatory and immune responses in the larynx.
Materials and methods: In this pilot study, twenty-four wild-type C57BL/6 mice were divided into four groups: smoke, vapor with nicotine, vapor without nicotine, and air only. Following daily exposure for 4 months, larynges were dissected and processed with cytokine detection arrays. Each laryngeal cytokine level between the four different groups was analyzed statistically by using statistical analysis software (SAS) to calculate the analysis of variance (ANOVA).
Results: IL-4 was the only cytokine found to achieve statistically significant different levels in this study, with elevated levels of IL-4 in the tobacco smoke and vapor with nicotine groups compared to the levels found in the vapor without nicotine and air only groups (p = 0.0418). While statistically non-significant, prominent findings revealed up-regulation of TGF-β2 and TGF-β3 in the smoke group, but near-normal levels of TGF-β2 and TGF-β3 and suppression of IL-10 in the vapor groups (p > 0.05).
Conclusion: The potential utility of the murine model is established for studying the inflammatory and immune effects of tobacco smoke and vapor on the mammalian larynx. IL-4 levels in mice larynges were significantly elevated in the tobacco smoke and vapor with nicotine groups.
Keywords: Cigarette smoke; Inflammation; Laryngeal cancer; Murine model; Nicotine; TGF-beta; Vape.
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