Buprenorphine Markedly Elevates a Panel of Surrogate Markers in a Murine Model of Sepsis.

Publication Date

2019

Journal Title

Shock

Abstract

Sepsis can be simulated in animals by perforating the cecum via a surgical procedure termed "cecal ligation and puncture" (CLP), which induces similar inflammatory responses as observed during the clinical course of human sepsis. In addition to anesthetic agents, many Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUC) often recommend the use of additional analgesic agents (such as opioid) to further augment the initial anesthetic effects. However, emerging evidence suggest that a commonly recommended opioid, buprenorphine, dramatically elevated circulating IL-6 levels and reduced animal survival in male C57BL/6 mice, but not in female mice possibly due to the complex interference of estrous cycles, fueling an ongoing debate regarding the possible impact of analgesic administration on the sepsis-induced systemic inflammation. As per the recommendation of a local government agency, we performed a pilot study and confirmed that repetitive administration of buprenorphine indeed markedly elevated circulating levels of four sepsis surrogate markers (e.g., IL-6, KC, MCP-1 and G-CSF) in 20- 60% of septic animals. This complication may adversely jeopardize our ability to use the CLP model to reliably simulate human sepsis, and to understand the complex mechanism underlying the pathogenesis of lethal sepsis. Thus, for experimental sepsis studies set to survey systemic inflammation and animal lethality at relatively later stages (e.g., at 24 h post CLP and beyond), we strongly recommend not to repetitively administer buprenorphine to eliminate its potential complication to animal sepsis models.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CCBY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0.

Volume Number

52

Issue Number

5

Pages

550-553

Document Type

Article

Status

Faculty, Northwell Researcher

Facility

School of Medicine; Northwell Health

Primary Department

Emergency Medicine

Additional Departments

General Internal Medicine; Molecular Medicine; Neurosurgery

PMID

31486774

DOI

10.1097/shk.0000000000001361

For the public and Northwell Health campuses

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