抄録
Hypoxia is a significant problem of high altitude aviation. Acute hypoxia has been recognized as a
critical physiological threat. In addition, physiological changes for adaptation to chronic hypoxia,
such as angiogenesis and development of fibrosis, have been shown in many studies. Pathological
fibrosis of the skin, lungs, liver and other organs are characterized by excessive synthesis and
accumulation of collagen and other extracellular matrix. Transforming Growth Factor-β(TGF-β)
stimulates collagen synthesis and accumulation, and is implicated in the development of pathological
fibrosis of organs. This study investigated the effect of hypoxia on the expression of Type I
procollagen(COL1A1)and TGF-βmRNA in NIH3T3 fibroblasts. NIH3T3 fibroblasts were cultured
under normal (21% oxygen) and hypoxic (1% oxygen) condition for 24 hours. The expression of
COL1A1 and TGF-mRNA was examined using reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction
(RT-PCR) and densitometric analysis by the National Institutes of Health Image analysis program.
Hypoxia induced 3.48 and 2.46 fold increase in COL1A1 and TGF-β mRNA, respectively. These
results suggest that hypoxia may be up-regulates collagen production in fibroblasts, and TGF-β may
play an important role in development of fibrosis in hypoxia.
