Original communicationSex hormones modulate distant organ injury in both a trauma/hemorrhagic shock model and a burn model
Section snippets
Experimental design
The overall aim of this study was to determine the role that male (testosterone) and female (β-estradiol) sex hormones play in the resistance and/or susceptibility to T/HS-induced and burn-induced intestinal or lung injury. To isolate the effects of sex hormones from other gender-related factors, we compared castrated and ovariectomized rats to normal male and proestrus female rats in 2 separate models: T/HS and burns. The T/HS model consisted of a laparotomy (trauma) and hemorrhage (30 mm Hg ×
Results
The preburn or sham-burn sex hormone plasma levels summarized in Table I validate the vaginal cytologic determination that the female rats were in the proestrus stage of the cycle. They also documented that the sex hormones were reduced as expected in the castrated and ovariectomized animals.
As previously reported,14 T/HS caused an increase in lung permeability and pulmonary neutrophil sequestration in male but not proestrus female rats (Fig 1). The increased susceptibility of the male rats to
Discussion
Since castration decreased and ovariectomy increased both T/HS- and burn-induced lung and gut injury, one major observation of the current study is that both male and female sex hormones modulate the extent of gut and lung injury, with testosterone contributing to injury and estradiol being protective. This was most apparent in the magnitude of T/HS-induced or burn-induced lung injury since the levels of lung permeability and neutrophil sequestration were similar between the castrated male and
Conclusion
The results of the current study demonstrate that male sex hormones potentiate, while female sex hormones reduce lung and gut injury in rats subjected to T/HS or burn injury. The results are also consistent with the concept that both T/HS-induced and burn-induced gut injuries contribute to lung injury and that increased nitric oxide production is associated with increased susceptibility to organ injury. The clinical implications of these observations utilizing the nonlethal T/HS and burn models
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2016, Journal of Investigative DermatologyCitation Excerpt :Female animals were chosen, because in humans HTS have equal distribution between females and males (Gauglitz et al., 2011). Moreover, it was previously shown that male sex hormones potentiate, whereas female hormones reduce, burn-induced lung and gut injury in Sprague-Dawley rats, a common burn injury model (Ananthakrishnan et al., 2005). The animals were housed in cages with access to food and water ad libitum and were maintained on a 12-hour light/dark cycle in a temperature-controlled room.
Supported by NIH grant GM59841.