Flow cytometric characterization of alveolar macrophages.

Phenotypes of lung free cells (FC) harvested from Fischer-344 rats by episodic lavage were characterized by flow cytometry. Parameters evaluated included electronic volume (EV), axial light loss (ALL), 90 degrees light scatter (LS), blue autofluorescence (BA), and green-yellow autofluorescence (G-YA). Three phenotypic populations, FC-A, FC-B, and FC-C were identified by their differing LS characteristics. FC-C represented 90% of the cells and were exclusively alveolar macrophages. Two subpopulations in FC-C, FC-CI and FC-CII, were further distinguished by their unique ALL features. The morphologic appearances of these subpopulations by light microscopy clearly differed in sorted preparations. Based on their patterns of autofluorescence, these FC-CI and FC-CII phenotypes were found to be composed of eight subpopulations. In FC populations harvested during further lavage episodes of the same lungs, the relative contributions of FC-CI to the FC-C subpopulation decreased as FC-CII correspondingly increased. This study demonstrates 1) that subpopulations of lavaged AM can be categorized according to their optical phenotypes by flow cytometry and 2) that the relative frequency of retrieval of some phenotypes depends on how exhaustively the lungs are lavaged. With regard to the latter, bronchoalveolar lavage does not randomly sample the underlying AM population in the alveolar compartment.