First 3D model to predict burn severity, impact of treatment

COLUMBUS, Ohio — With more than a half million burns requiring medical intervention each year, scientists at Ohio State think they may have found a way to reduce the severity of burns by as much as fifty percent by applying a particular form of natural vitamin E within the first few hours after an injury.

The ongoing trials are the result of collaboration between mathematicians and regenerative medicine experts who developed the first ever three-dimensional mathematical model that predicts how deep and wide a burn will spread within the first twelve hours.

The model may help physicians select more effective treatments and give them a tool to predict the efficacy of intervention – something that they are not currently able to do.

“Burn injury grows after the actual burn event. Understanding the dynamics of such growth is of substantial value,” says Chandan Sen, PhD, executive director of the Comprehensive Wound Center at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center. “The mathematical model that we developed gives an objective measure of how a burn wound will expand over time plus the ability to measure the impact of any given intervention, and that’s enabled us to form a solid hypothesis for the current studies.”

Supported by funding from the Ohio State Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS) and published in Wound Repair and Regeneration, the 3D model also suggested that a form of natural vitamin E called tocotrienol could significantly reduce the amount of damage caused by lipid peroxidation, a process where a toxic cascade of chemicals released into the skin causes burns to grow and damage surrounding healthy tissue.

“The chemical stages of lipid peroxidation are a well-established, practical measure that indicates how much a wound is worsening. Our team developed a formula that correlates the rate of chemical changes to theOff White X Max 97