Cellular immune mechanisms in thermally injured mice

An attempt was made to establish an animal model for analysing the cellular immune alterations following thermal injury and to correlate the results with those obtained in humans. A standard burn involving 20 per cent of the body surface area was established in C57 black mice (b1). The results revealed a loss of total T cells until post-burn day 10 and an increase in B cells only during post-burn day 1. The lymphocyte proliferative response to PHA was elevated with the appearance of null cells on post-burn day 10. This observation revealed a generalized depression in the immune responses which was significant until post-burn day 10. However, the results were not comparable with the human studies.