Recent studies have shown that airway Nivolumab order hyperresponsiveness can be dissociated from cellular inflammation while remaining linked to airway remodeling, and some previous reports also suggested that airway inflammation, lung remodeling and responsiveness may not be directly interrelated (Alcorn

et al., 2007 and Crimi et al., 1998). Particularly, Alcorn et al. (2007) suggested that attenuated airway remodeling does not impact airway inflammatory responses or airway responsiveness. Corroborating these findings, Kenyon et al. (2003) showed that animals that received a TGF-β1 instillation had increased the expression of types I and III collagen as well as the total collagen content in the small airways. Notably, there were

no signs of inflammation PD0332991 concentration detected in this process. These findings suggest that inflammation and pulmonary remodeling may occur independently (Chapman, 2004, Gauldie et al., 2002 and Selman et al., 2001). In general, these studies demonstrate that airway inflammation, lung remodeling and responsiveness may not be directly interrelated and suggest that the lack of symptoms in some asthmatic patients who smoke (mild smokers) does not imply an absence of any pathologic changes. Bronchial constriction, for example, could be attenuated by an increase of collagen content around airways (Bento and Hershenson, 1998, Chen et al., 2003, Niimi et al., 2003 and Palmans et al., 2000). In summary, in our experimental model, short-term exposure to cigarette smoke in mice with pulmonary allergic inflammation resulted in an attenuation of pulmonary inflammation and responsiveness but led to an increase

in lung remodeling. The authors would like to thank to Ângela Santos, Maína Morales, Lucas Faustino, Matheus Costa, Pedro Vieira, Niels Olsen and Luis Fernando Ferraz for their invaluable technical help. “
“Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have increased neural drive below to their respiratory muscles in order to overcome the increased respiratory load that they face (De Troyer et al., 1997, Gandevia et al., 1996 and Polkey et al., 1996), but relatively little is known about the cortico-spinal control of the respiratory muscles in COPD. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a technique which allows detailed investigation of corticospinal pathways. A magnetic stimulus applied over the area of the primary motor cortex responsible for the diaphragm elicits an electrical response from the diaphragm, referred to as the motor evoked potential (MEP). Various aspects of the MEP can be measured and may respond to pathophysiological processes (Gandevia and Rothwell, 1987, Gea et al., 1993, Sharshar et al., 2003 and Verin et al., 2004). The simplest is the motor threshold which is the lowest intensity of stimulation that elicits a response.