title: Distribution of pulmonary responsiveness to aerosol histamine in dogs.
abstract: Dose-response curves to aerosol histamine in 102 anesthetized, intubated, spontaneously breathing dogs revealed a spectrum of airway responsiveness with a greater than 40-fold difference between the most and the least sensitive animals. The frequency distribution of responses fits a log normal distribution. No correlation was found between sex, age, or control values of dynamic compliance (Cdyn) and lung resistance (RL) and the dose of histamine required to cause a response. Repetitive studies in 17 dogs observed for up to 20 mo showed that the dose at which an individual dog would respond was reproducible within a narrow range and that the differences between dogs were highly significant (P greater than 0.001). The long-term reproducibility of the response to aerosol histamine in individual dogs suggests that short-term reversible airway insults are not responsible for the range in responses noted between animals.
mesh_terms: D000336:Aerosols; D000403:Airway Resistance / Q000187:drug effects; D000818:Animals; D001249:Asthma / Q000209:etiology; D004285:Dogs; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D004342:Drug Hypersensitivity; D005260:Female; D006632:Histamine / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000494:pharmacology; D008168:Lung / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000502:physiology; D008170:Lung Compliance / Q000187:drug effects; D008297:Male
chemical_list: D000336:Aerosols; D006632:Histamine