Burns represent one of the most excruciating and devastating battlefield injuries. Based on estimates reported in 2010, burn injuries account for 603,000 visits to US emergency departments and 50,000 hospital admissions each year. The annualized cost of these hospitalizations totals $1 billion. Despite recent advances in acute critical care, the damage that occurs to organs and systems (e.g., heart, liver, kidney, lung, and immune cells) in the sub-acute phase of severe burn injury remains a major challenge to achieving further reductions in mortality and improvements in the long-term clinical and functional outcomes of burn.
The treatment proposed in this study targets the mitochondria, organelles that are crucial for the survival and function of every cell type within the body. Known as the power plants of cells, the mitochondria generate energy and also function as critical regulators of cellular life, death, and inflammation. Burn injury damages the mitochondria in cells close to and distant from the injury site. This, in turn, complicates the patient's critical illness by causing multiple organ dysfunction. The mitochondria, therefore, pose a plausible potential target to further improve the clinical outcome of burn patients. Nonetheless, therapies that target the mitochondria have not yet been studied in burn patients.
CoQ10 is an essential nutrient that is vital to the function and integrity of the mitochondria. CoQ10 deficiency causes mitochondrial dysfunction and thereby induces dysfunction in multiple organs, including liver, heart, immune cells (i.e., white blood cells), brain, and muscle. In a pilot clinical study of CoQ10, we showed that burn injury causes CoQ10 deficiency, which is reversed by CoQ10 supplementation. In our preclinical study in mice, CoQ10 administration prevented mitochondrial damage, systemic inflammation, and metabolic dysfunction in burned animals, and improved survival and bacterial killing activity in animals with severe infection. Our data indicate that CoQ10 deficiency caused by burn injury may worsen the patient's clinical condition. Since CoQ10 supplementation is capable of reversing CoQ10 deficiency, which, in turn, may prevent mitochondrial damage and subsequent dysfunction of multiple organs, it is a plausible therapy for preventing mortality and promoting recovery in burn patients.
Two hundred ninety eligible burn patients admitted to any of the 15 military and civilian hospitals participating in this study will be enrolled within 48 hours after severe burn injury and randomly assigned to either CoQ10 (n=150) or Placebo (n=150) group. The safety and the efficacy of CoQ10 on multiple organ dysfunction and death, length of hospital stay, mitochondrial damage, and muscle wasting will be studied in comparison with Placebo.
