Burn injuries are a major public health issue and management of these a key concern. Regular assessment of the healing tissue is necessary but biopsies-the gold standard, are painful and hinder the healing process. A group of scientists at Manipal University, Karnataka have come up with a solution for easier assessment of healing progression, Laser Light.
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Prof. Mahato and his colleagues showed the ability of laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) technique to quantify the amount of collagen in the healing tissue and thus analyze the recovery process. The more the collagen content, the healthier the tissue.
The strategy is to study the biochemical changes by exploiting the tissue fluorophores. Fluorophores are chemical compounds that can re-emit light upon light excitation. Some of the most common fluorophores are collagen, elastin, amino acids (building blocks of proteins) like Tryptophan, Phenylalanine and Tyrosine that are responsible for tissue autofluorescence. In this technique, they hit the injured area or area of interest with a laser light of a particular wavelength, here 325nm and then capture the emitted light in the range of 350-700nm and generate a spectrum. For each region, multiple spectra are generated and averaged. This yields an image that correlates with collagen content reflective of the healthy repair.
They propose a simple technique to evaluate the progression of healing using a non-invasive, fast and an easy to use tool.
“With LIF we evaluated collagen synthesis and the healing process in vivo without sacrificing the animal. The evaluation using this technique takes only 15-20sec and is a biopsy free/non-invasive approach,” explains Prof. Krishna K Mahato.
The team led by Prof. Mahato, involved experts from different departments at Manipal University, Karnataka. Their preliminary studies on monitoring the effectiveness of low power laser therapy (LPLT) in mice with burn wounds, using LIF technique, showed encouraging results.
“LIF is sensitive and since it is an objective assessment, it doesn’t demand experienced operators and thus is user-friendly”, suggest the authors.
According to WHO, burns are a global public health problem accounting for 180,000 deaths per year. In India, over 1000,000 people are moderately or severely burnt every year.
“We have promising results in samples ex vivo from burn patients and with further analyses and studies, we hope to have this tool routinely used for patients in near future,” Prof. Mahato commented.
The team comprised of Bharath Rathnakar, Bola Sadashiva Satish Rao, Vijendra Prabhu, Subhash Chandra and Krishna Kishore Mahato. The results are recently published in Lasers in Medical Science Journal.