FIGURE 5.

Re‐activation of suppressed autophagy at the early phase of DHCA aggravated lung injury. (A) Experimental Protocol IV. Autophagy inducer rapamycin was given by intraperitoneal injection at 24 h, 30 min pre‐operation in Sham group and DHCA 3 h group, respectively (n = 5 independent experiments). (B and C) The expression levels of autophagy‐related proteins were significantly increased after rapamycin was given. Quantitative analysis is shown in (C; n = 5). (D) Representative haematoxylin and eosin staining images in Sham group (as Control), DHCA 3 h group (as Control), Sham +rapamycin group and DHCA 3 h + rapamycin group. Compared with the Control group, the degree of lung injury increased at 3 h after DHCA (Scale bar = 100 μm). (E) Re‐activation of autophagy significantly increased lung injury score at the early phase of DHCA. (F) The levels of inflammatory factors in blood serum and BALF were significantly high after the re‐activation of autophagy. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001