Numerical modeling of particle deposition in ferret airways: A comparison with humans

Abstract

The ferret is commonly used as an animal model for studying human respiratory diseases, but the validation is lacking. The particle deposition patterns in ferret airways was investigated and compared to those in humans. A computational fluid dynamics method was used to simulate particle deposition in the tracheobronchial airway by using the truncated single-path models. The deposition characteristics of particles with diameters of 1, 3, and 5 μm were investigated under various respiratory rates at different activity conditions (i.e., sedentary, light, moderate, and intense activities). For both human and ferret models, deposition increased with both generation and particle size but decreased with respiratory rate. Particles of 1–5 μm deposit more but transport upper in ferrets than in humans, which suggests that ferrets are more likely to be infected in the proximal airways. The results show that the trend of particle deposition in the ferret airways is similar to that in human airways but with different deposition rates and sites. Our findings indicate that ferret for studying human respiratory diseases is suitable for the upper respiratory diseases, such as human influenza, but may not be suitable for studying the lower respiratory diseases, such as pneumonia. Copyright © 2017 American Association for Aerosol Research.