Sulfur mustard cutaneous injury characterization based on SKH‐1 mouse model: relevance of non‐invasive methods in terms of wound healing process analyses

Abstract

Our findings suggest that bio-engineering methods are eligible to evaluate new treatments on SM-induced skin SKH-1 mouse lesions, thus making an allowance for less invasive methods such as histological, genomic or proteomic approaches.

Time course of lewisite‐induced skin lesions and inflammatory response in the SKH‐1 hairless mouse model

“…This mouse possesses interesting skin characteristics and has been widely used in dermal studies including wound healing and exposure to HD . After HD liquid or vapor challenge, we recently reported that histological alterations, transcriptional responses, and paraclinical changes in the SHK‐1 mouse skin were similar to those described in other models . To the best of our knowledge, no data seem to be available on L‐induced skin injuries using this mouse model.…”

“…For pain control, buprenorphin (0.05 mg/kg; Temgesic, Merck & Co, Levallois‐Perret, France) was delivered by a subcutaneous injection. The occluded vapor cup technique was used to expose the skin (0.5 cm 2 ) to L saturated vapors (10 μL of neat liquid L for a selected period of 8 min) and to achieve deep dermal burns . On the dorsal skin surface on each animal, three sites were exposed to L and the remaining site served as a control.…”

“…The integrity of the skin barrier function was assessed by measuring the transepidermal water loss (TEWL in g/m 2 /h) using an evaporimeter (Aquaflux AF200, Biox System, London, United Kingdom) …”

“…Skin samples of the W27 group were also included. Six skin sections per biopsy (7 μm) stained with hematoxylin‐phloxin‐safranin (HPS) were examined by light microscopy . The epidermal thickness excluding the stratum corneum layer was measured at four places for one skin section (i.e., 6 × 4 = 24 measures for each time point) using a software (Axiovision Rel v. 4.6, Carl Zeiss, Göttingen, Germany).…”

Time course of skin features and inflammatory biomarkers after liquid sulfur mustard exposure in SKH-1 hairless mice

“…For this, access to animal models is absolutely mandatory. In the last years, the hairless mouse has become the model of choice for investigating the effects of SM or of its monofunctional analogue CEES (Batal et al, 2013;Clery-Barraud et al, 2012;Dorandeu et al, 2011,b;Jain et al, 2011a,b;Joseph et al, 2011;Tewari-Singh et al, 2009;Vallet et al, 2012). Emphasis was placed in many of these studies on the inflammatory skin response, either after liquid CEES exposure (Jain et al, 2011a,b;Tewari-Singh et al, 2009) or SM vapor exposure (Joseph et al, 2011;Vallet et al, 2012).…”