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J Appl Physiol 90: 2041-2047, 2001;
8750-7587/01 $5.00
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Vol. 90, Issue 6, 2041-2047, June 2001

Stiffness of peripheral airway folding membrane in rabbits

Rodney K. Lambert, Peter D. Paré, and Mitsushi Okazawa

Institute of Fundamental Sciences-Physics, Massey University, Palmerston North, 5331 New Zealand; University of British Columbia Pulmonary Research Laboratory, St Paul's Hospital, Vancouver, Canada V6Z 1Y6; and Division of Respirology and Allergology, Department of Medicine, Fujita Health University, Toyoakeshi, 470-1192 Japan

We have observed that small, membranous bronchioles from rabbits, in which the smooth muscle is not activated, experience a critical elastic buckling involving the whole airway wall during deflation of the lung. This implies that, at some point during the deflation, the airway wall goes from being in a state of tension to a state of compression. At the transition, there is neither net tension nor net compression in the wall, and the transmural pressure difference must, therefore, be zero. Thus at this point, the pressure difference across the muscle that results from the passive stress in the muscle is just balanced by the pressure difference across the folded mucosal membrane. We estimated the muscle stress, and hence the pressure across the muscle, from published data on rabbit trachealis (Opazo-Saez A and Paré PD, J Appl Physiol 77: 1638-1643, 1994) and equated this to the pressure across the folded membrane. By using a theoretical prediction of this pressure (Lambert RK, Codd SL, Alley MR, and Pack RJ, J Appl Physiol 77: 1206-1216, 1994), together with the results of our morphometric measurements on these airways, we estimated that the flexural rigidity of the folding membrane in peripheral rabbit airways is of the order of 10-12 Pa · m3. This value implies that, in these airways, membrane folding provides significant resistance to airway smooth muscle shortening.

airway mechanics; critical buckling; elasticity; area-pressure relationship


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