EFFECTS OF HYPERBARIC OXYGEN TREATMENT ON IRRITABLE BOWEL DISEASE

Purpose: Irritable bowel diseases (IBD), including Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, are idiopathic inflammatory disorders of the gastrointestinal tract that lead to chronically inappropriate immune responses against normal flora in the gut. Among other factors, oxidative stress and increased intestinal tissue injury have been indicated in patients with IBD. Hyperbaric oxygen treatment (HBOT) has been successfully used in humans to treat different conditions such as decompression sickness in scuba diving (Gill et al., 2004), carbon monoxide poisoning, and poor wound healing in diabeteic patients (Tiaka et al., 2011). The purpose of this experiment was to determine the effect of hyperbaric oxygen treatment on colon inflammation in irritable bowel disease. Methods: Colitis was induced in mice using dextran sodium sulfate (DSS), according to a previous described model (Wirtz et al., 2007), and one of the groups was treated with hyperbaric oxygen. 24 eight-week old male C57-BL/6 mice (Jackson Laboratories) were divided into 3 groups: a control group, which was only given distilled water; a second group in which IBD was induced through a 14 day DSS (3%) in drinking water, and a third group also induced with a 14 day DSS (3%) in drinking water and simultaneously treated with HBO daily for two hours. Daily weight loss for all mice was recorded, colons were measured, and colon tissue was histologically analyzed. Results: Hyperbaric oxygen treatment of DSS induced mice led to a significant (P <.05) increase in body weight and colon weight/length ratio measurements compared to DSS induced mice that did not undergo hyperbaric oxygen treatment. Conclusions: Hyperbaric oxygen treatment (HBOT) of colitis induced mice does not appear to decrease colon weight/length ratio, a reliable marker of inflammatory responses in IBD (Galvez et al., 2000). However, HBOT does improve survival and maintains body weight at better levels than DSS-induced mice without treatment. Histological analysis of colon tissues is pending and will provide a better indication of the degree of inflammation in DSS induced mice treated with HBOT.