Measuring Anaphylaxis with Thermography in a Peanut Murine Model

RATIONALE: Murine models are readily used to investigate mechanisms potentially involved in anaphylaxis. Monitoring the progression of anaphylaxis currently uses techniques that are either: subjective and noninvasive or objective and invasive. We hypothesis that the use of thermography will allow for objective and noninvasive monitoring of anaphylaxis in the murine peanut model.

METHODS: Eleven peanut sensitized and six peanut naive C3H/HeJ mice underwent intraperitoneal challenge. Thermal images using a FLIR i3 were taken at 30-minute intervals and prior to digital core rectal temperature measurements. Student t-test and ANOVA were used to compare temperatures recorded at 0, 30 and 60 minutes.

RESULTS: An ANOVA on serial thermal images at baseline, 30 and 60 minutes during the IP peanut challenge yielded a p-value of <0.0001. Comparison in pre-handling thermal images with respective core temperatures showed no statistical difference in temperature directionality (p-value 0.1167). There was no statistical difference between lowest temperature’s time interval recorded when comparing core and thermal readings (p-value 0.2619). Temperature readings by either method at 30 and 60 minutes were within <7 percent of each other.

CONCLUSIONS: The use of thermography can be used to collect objective and noninvasive temperature measurement during murine anaphylaxis models. Although not as accurate as any one core rectal temperature, more frequent measurements can be made with thermography without additional adverse stress on the model. There were no statistical differences in temperature directionality or peak severity of anaphylaxis time intervals among the mice using thermography verse core rectal temperatures.