UC Irvine

Methyl Isocyanate has been known to be a very toxic and it can lead to many different chronic respiratory diseases if left untreated. Despite the potential impact on public health, no effective counteragents have been discovered. Recently, several studies showed administration of Nitro Oleic Acid can reverse the effects of Methyl Isocyanate. In this study, we aim to test the effectiveness of the treatment to improve airway obstruction using a minimally-invasive optical coherence tomography (OCT) endoscopy and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. Rats were first exposed to Methyl Isocyanate and treated with different levels of Nitro Oleic Acid. Immediately after the animals were sacrificed, OCT images of the tracheas were taken to create a 3D reconstruction of the trachea. Finally, computational fluid dynamics simulations were performed to investigate how air would flow through the trachea and measured the performance of the trachea based on velocity, cross-sectional area, pressure, and airway resistance. We found the rats treated with Methyl Isocyanate only performed the worst while the 30 mg NO2OA treated rats were closer to healthy levels based on the OCT measurements and flow simulation results.