Assessment of pollutant-induced impairment of the pulmonary surfactant system by high-performance liquid chromatography

The pulmonary surfactant system, consisting mainly of phospholipids and associated glycoproteins, is of importance in inhalation toxicology for several reasons. Briefly summarizing, one could say that surfactant may serve as a marker for alveolar injury, is an important factor for the fate of foreign particles penetrating the lung, and its target of inhaled toxic substances which may impair mechanical stability and nonspecific defense mechanisms of the alveoli by altering the surfactant system. Based upon was is described in the literature, an improved high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method has been recently developed in our laboratory that permits separation and quantification of all surfactant phospholipids. The main features of the HPLC method are presented here as well as its application for determing exposure-related changes in the rat lung exposed to monomeric methylene diphenly diisocyanate (MDI) aerosol.