Use of bronchoalveolar lavage to detect lung injury.

This unit describes how bronchoalveolar lavage can be used in laboratory animals to sample the epithelial lining fluid of the lung for information on the degree of pulmonary inflammation induced by exposure to an airborne toxicant. The technique allows quantitative assessment of inflammatory responses and is valuable for providing dose-response information in exposed animals. Lavage fluid samples may also be used for proteomic analyses, and the protein expression profiles may be used to address specific mechanistic questions.