Miss Amira Allahham1
1Fiona Wood Foundation, Crawley, Australia
Abstract:
Burn patients, especially children, are more prone to mental health conditions following their injury as recently demonstrated using population-based studies in Western Australia. 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. A mouse model was used to: 1) investigate the changes in behaviour following burn injury, and 2) To determine the genes in the brain with altered expression following burn-injury. Mice were allocated into three intervention groups; a burn group which received a non-severe burn injury 7-8% of the total body surface area administered under anaesthesia, an excision group which received a 7-8% wound to control for the effects of trauma without the burn, and a sham group that received the anaesthesia and no injury. Mice were tested through a series of behavioural tests before and after their intervention. At the conclusion of the experiment mice were euthanized and their brains were collected for genetic analysis through RNA sequencing. Behavioural tests showed no significant difference before and after the burns, however, significant changes were shown in genes associated with pathways of neurodegenerative diseases. More investigation of the genetic pathways after burns is required to understand the impact of burn injuries on the brain to eventually be able to understand and treat the mental health conditions that arise after burns.
Biography:
Amira is a PhD student from UWA. Her project investigates the effect of burn injuries on mental health by exploring a range of techniques including testing behaviour in animal models, RNA sequencing, lipid analysis, and quality of life surveys for paediatric patients to understand their quality of life after burns.