The effect of burn injuries on brain transcriptomics and metabolomics

Amira Allahham^1,2, Mark Fear^1,2, Fiona Wood^1,2,3, Sam Lodge⁴, Andrew Stevenson⁵,
¹University of Western Australia , Crawley, WA, Australia
²Fiona Wood Foundation , Murdoch, WA, Australia
³Burn Service of Western Australia , Murdoch, WA, Australia
⁴Australian National Phenome Centre, Murdoch, WA, Australia
⁵Burn Injury research Unit, University of Western Australia WA, Australia

Abstract

The inflammatory response to a burn, coupled to a leaky blood-brain barrier may lead to immune and inflammatory changes in the brain that underlie the long-term increase of mental health hospital admissions observed in paediatric burn populations. However, there is a lack of mechanistic data to examine the effects of burns on the brain causing these mental health problems. In this study, a mouse model was used to: 1) To determine the genes in the brain with altered expression following burn-injury, and 2) To investigate the changes in the brain metabolomics after burn injury. Mice were allocated into two intervention groups; a burn group that received a burn 7-8% of the total body surface area, and a sham group that received no injury burns. Mice were euthanized three months after their intervention procedure and their brains were collected analysis through RNA sequencing and Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). RNA sequencing of the hippocampus revealed significant changes in genes related to inflammation and neurodegenerative diseases. Analysis of the cerebellum using NMR also revealed significant changes between groups where metabolites including N-acetylasparatate, lactate, glutamine, glutamate were all reduced in the cerebellums of mice with burns. These findings show that non-severe burns can have a physiological impact on the brain even after the burn site has healed, which may explain the increase in mental health hospital admission observed in burn patients. This research may inform future treatments in burn patients to alleviate the burden of long-term mental health conditions in these patients post injury.

Biography

Amira is a PhD student in the school of biomedical science in UWA. She completed her double major degree in Neuroscience and Anatomy and Human Biology in 2018, and her Honours degree in Neuroscience in 2019. She is currently working on her PhD project on the effect of burn injuries on mental health, where she is exploring a range of techniques including testing behaviour in an animal models, RNA sequencing and genetic analysis, mass spectrometry analysis, and quality of life surveys for paediatric patients to understand the effects and mechanisms in which mental health arises after burns.