Design: In vitro analysis of human skin. Subjects: Skin samples and cells from patients with and without thermal injury. Interventions and Measurements: We stained 3 skin samples from normal skin (taken at the time of elective cosmetic surgery) with antibodies to BNP and compared these with 3 tissue samples obtained from burned human skin taken during tangential excision of deep burns. Normal human-derived fibroblasts and keratinocytes were exposed to BNP in vitro and cGMP accumulation was evaluated. Data Analysis: cGMP levels were quantified and compared with analysis of variance (ANOVA).

BNP was present in all specimens of thermally injured skin (especially around collagen, epithelial cells, and endothelial cells), but not in any uninjured skin samples (p = 0.05, single-tailed Fisher's exact test). In vitro grown fibroblasts showed significant increases of cGMP levels with increasing levels of BNP exposure (mean values: 0.6 ± 0.3, 1.2 ± 0.2, 4.6 ± 0.1, and 5.0 ± 0.9 pmol/mL with BNP concentrations of 0, 10, 500, and 1000 nM, respectively, p < 0.001). The effect of BNP on keratinocytes was minimal and below the level of quantification.

This is cache, read story here