Effect of thermal injury and sepsis on neutrophil function.

Burn injury and sepsis have been repeatedly demonstrated to impair the function of circulating (blood) neutrophils. As a result of the difficulty in harvesting and purifying neutrophils from the burn wound, there have been minimal investigations to date on the effect of burn injury and sepsis on the function of neutrophils which have reached the wound. We utilized a sponge matrix model in order to obtain neutrophils from burned and burned-infected rats. Despite having a higher concentration of neutrophils in the blood, both the burned and burned-infected rats were noted to have a decreased number of neutrophils infiltrating the sponge compared with the controls (1.91 +/- 0.30 x 10(6), 2.31 +/- 0.47 x 10(6), and 4.82 +/- 0.64 x 10(6) neutrophils per sponge, respectively). Blood neutrophils from both the burned and burned-infected rats had a greater chemiluminescence capacity than neutrophils from the control group (p < 0.0001). This enhanced capacity was not present with sponge neutrophils obtained from the burned-infected group. The diminished capacity may have been the result of a decreased concentration of prostaglandin E in the sponge fluid of the burned-infected rats compared with that of the burned or control rats (52 +/- 9, 135 +/- 15, and 114 +/- 13 pg/mL of sponge fluid, respectively).