Lung
infection can evoke pulmonary and systemic
inflammation, which is associated with systemic severe symptoms, such as skeletal muscle wasting. While
N-chlorotaurine (also known as
taurine chloramine; TauCl) has anti-inflammatory effects in cells, its effects against pulmonary and systemic
inflammation after lung
infection has not been elucidated. In the present study, we evaluated the anti-inflammatory effect of the
taurine derivative, TauCl against Escherichia coli-derived
lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced
pneumonia in obese mice maintained on a high fat diet. In this study, TauCl was injected intraperitoneally 1 h before intratracheal LPS administration. While
body weight was decreased by 7.5% after LPS administration, TauCl treatment suppressed
body weight loss. TauCl also attenuated the increase in lung weight due to lung
edema. While LPS-induced acute
pneumonia caused an increase in
cytokine/
chemokine mRNA expression, including that of IL-1β, -6, TNF-α, MCP-1, TauCl treatment attenuated
IL-6, and
TNF-alpha expression, but not IL-1β and MCP-1. TauCl treatment partly attenuated the elevation of the serum
cytokines. Furthermore, TauCl treatment alleviated skeletal muscle wasting. Importantly, LPS-induced expression of Atrogin-1, MuRF1 and IκB, direct or indirect targets for NFκB, were suppressed by TauCl treatment. These findings suggest that intraperitoneal TauCl treatment attenuates acute
pneumonia-related pulmonary and systemic
inflammation, including muscle wasting, in vivo.