Burns : journal of the International Society for Burn Injuries
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Child burn injuries in Mongolia are often caused by electric cooking appliances used on the floor or low table in traditional tent-like dwellings (called a ger) which have no separate kitchen. To prevent these injuries, we developed a context-specific kitchen rack to make electric appliances inaccessible to children, and the rack was provided to 50 families with children aged 0-3 years living in gers for a pilot test. In the present study, we investigated their opinions about the rack after they used it for about 10 months through semi-structured interviews, their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for the rack using a contingent valuation method, and their preference for potential modifications of the rack using best-worst scaling. ⋯ The highest priority of modifications of the rack was to enclose the lower section of the rack with doors (which was originally open without doors to reduce the production cost). A few families did not use the rack in winter because they used heating stoves instead of electric appliances for cooking, but we found a unanimous view that the rack reduces burn injuries to children, which may be reflected in their increased WTP for the rack. These findings would guide us to make our burn prevention efforts more relevant to real-life situations and socially acceptable in Mongolia.
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Patients with burns commonly present to Emergency Departments (EDs), in addition to burn centers. Patients at burn centers typically have more severe burns than those at EDs, and previous studies have analyzed burn center databases. To update the overall burn epidemiology in the United States (US), we analyzed burn injury trends and sources across all age groups using the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), which collects all injuries reported to US EDs. ⋯ The most common injured region was the hand for all age groups (34.44%). Although most burn injuries were potentially preventable, the overall burn rate did not decrease 2000-2018. Therefore, we offer guidance on prevention strategies for high-risk sources and age groups.
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Alu elements are retrotransposons related to epigenetic modifications. To date, the role of epigenetics in hypertrophic scars from burn remains unknown. Here, our aim was to examine the pathophysiology of hypertrophic scars from an epigenetic perspective. ⋯ Alu total methylation (mC) and the uCmC pattern were significantly lower, whereas uCuC was significantly higher, in hypertrophic scar tissues than in normal skin (p < 0.0001). Receiver operating characteristic analysis indicated that the uCmC and uCuC patterns are useful as hypertrophic scar DNA methylation markers after burn, with 91.30% sensitivity and 96.23% specificity and 100% sensitivity and 94.23% specificity, respectively. Our findings suggest that epigenetic modifications play a major role in hypertrophic scar pathogenesis, and may be the starting point for developing a novel technique for burn scar treatment.