Dyslipidemia after Burn Injury: a Potential Therapeutic Target

Background: Thermal injury can cause many changes in the skin-local responseand in the body in general –systemic response; the metabolic changes represent an important one among systemic response. Dyslipidemia after burn injury is one of the important alterations that resulted from many factors like hypermetabolic state in burn, release of hormones and inflammatory mediators, the aim of this study is to evaluate the occurrence of dyslipidemia after burn injury, and the evaluation of possible targeting of these changes in burned patients aiming to improve burn management and outcomes Patients and Methods: This study was carried out on 96 burned patients with different ages of both sexes and varying burn percentage group A, compared with group B which is 18 normal healthy subjects utilized for comparison. To each group, serum cholesterol, serum triglyceride and serum high density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, were measured depending on standard methods. Results:Results of this study show the occurrence of changes in serum lipids of burned patients namely decrease in serum cholesterol level, increase in serum TG level and decrease in serum HDL level compared to normal subjects. Conclusion:This study clearly showed the beneficial role of measuring serum cholesterol, TG and HDL in burned patients, also show the importance of targeting changes that occur in their levels along burn course which may have beneficial effect through protecting organ damage and lead to increase survival rates among burn subjects and improve burn outcome.