Different oxygen treatment pressures alter inflammatory gene expression in human endothelial cells

Hyperbaric oxygen has proven to be a useful treatment for chronic wounds. However, therapeutic conditions vary between treatment centers, and we wished to investigate the effects of different treatment pressures on cells under inflammatory conditions. Endothelial cells were exposed to a chronic wound model com prising hypoxia (2% O2 at 1 atmosphere absolute (atm abs); PO2 ~ 2 kPa) in the presence of 0.5 µg/ml lipo polysaccharide and 1 ng/ml TNF-α for 24 hours, then treated with normobaric oxygen (NBO2; 95%O2/5%CO2 at 1.0 atm abs; PO2 ~ 96.3 kPa), hyperbaric oxygen (HBO2) at 1.5 atm abs (1.5HBO2; 96.7%O2/3.3%CO2 at 1.5 atm abs; PO2 ~ 147 kPa), and HBO2 at 2.4 atm abs (2.4HBO2; 97.9%O2/2.1%CO2 at 2.4 atm abs; PO2~ 238 kPa). The mRNA expression of 92 inflammatory genes was then analyzed, and we identified changes in genes involved in adhesion molecule expression, angio genesis and tissue remodeling, intracellular signaling, and cellular oxygen responses and redox signaling. We noted differences in expression between different treatment pressures, highlighting the need for fur ther research into the use of different therapeutic protocols in the treatment of inflammatory conditions such as chronic wounds