Studies of Altered Response to Infection Induced by Thermal Injury.
Abstract
This report describes the results of this year's experiments to reduce the post burn incidence of fatal sepsis by (1) rapidly identifying and segregating those individuals that are at greatest risk of sepsis; (2) delineating the nature of the burn induced immune defect; and (3) characterizing those mechanisms by which thermal injury causes immune aberrations. Understanding of these mechanisms may allow development of far forward prophylactic measures which could prevent thermal injury from inducing immune defects. Experimental data derived from our patient studies have allowed us to develop assays for detecting early immune anomalies and to delineate the cell type(s) involved in these aberrations. Our murine model has been primarily utilized to characterize the mechanisms by which thermal injury causes the development of immune defects. The most pertinent results from this year's research can be summarized as follows: Those thermally injured individuals who will be unable to contain an infectious challenge have leukocytes which are PHA hyporesponsive beginning at days 4-6 post burn. All other thermally injured patients have unchanged or hyper-responsive leukocytes in the PHA assay. 85 percent of the burn patients whose lymphocytes were hyporesponsive in the PHA assay later succumbed to septicemia.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 31, 1979
- Accession Number
- ADA067890
Entities
People
- Carol L. Miller
Organizations
- University of California, San Francisco