Fat grafting accelerates revascularisation and decreases fibrosis following thermal injury.

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

• Level A · Stronger Clinical Evidence
• Level B · Emerging clinical evidence with positive signals
• Level C · Early human research exploring benefits
• Level D · Scientific groundwork from lab and animal studies
• Emerging · Emerging topic under active research

Abstract (original English)

Fat grafting has been shown clinically to improve the quality of burn scars. To date, no study has explored the mechanism of this effect. We aimed to do so by combining our murine model of fat grafting with a previously described murine model of thermal injury. Wild-type FVB mice (n=20) were anaesthetised, shaved and depilitated. Brass rods were heated to 100°C in a hot water bath before being applied to the dorsum of the mice for 10s, yielding a full-thickness injury. Following a 2-week recovery period, the mice underwent Doppler scanning before being fat/sham grafted with 1.5cc of human fat/saline. Half were sacrificed 4 weeks following grafting, and half were sacrificed 8 weeks following grafting. Both groups underwent repeat Doppler scanning immediately prior to sacrifice. Burn scar samples were taken following sacrifice at both time points for protein quantification, CD31 staining and Picrosirius red staining. Doppler scanning demonstrated significantly greater flux in fat-grafted animals than saline-grafted animals at 4 weeks (fat=305±15.77mV, saline=242±15.83mV; p=0.026). Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) analysis in fat-grafted animals demonstrated significant increase in vasculogenic proteins at 4 weeks (vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF): fat=74.3±4.39ngml(-1), saline=34.3±5.23ngml(-1); p=0.004) (stromal cell-derived factor-1 (SDF-1): fat=51.8±1.23ngml(

Evidence level

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

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