The Effect of Simulated Burn Injury on Post Exercise Recovery in Hot Environments

Burn survivors have difficulty thermoregulating due to reduced skin blood flow and sweating responses at the grafted sites. It has been previously shown that this impaired heat dissipation results in burn survivors experiencing higher core temperatures for a given exercise/environmental exposure compared to non-burned individuals. This also holds true with the use of simulated burn injury. When an absorbent material is applied to the skin over a desired amount of body surface area, it replicates a burn injury of the same size (i.e., simulated burn injury). A question that remains unknown is if this impaired thermoregulation in burn survivors would affect post-exercise core temperature recovery, i.e., do burn survivors recover slower than non-burned individuals upon stopping exercise. To that end, the primary objective of this project is to determine the rate at which body temperature and other markers of thermoregulation recover after a bout of exercise in the heat and if this response is different in the same individual with and without simulated burn injury.

NCT Number	NCT07050264
Lead Sponsor	University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center Collaborators: National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
Conditions	Burn Injury, Body Temperature Regulation, Cardiovascular Physiology
Enrollment	28 participants
Start Date	2026-03-01
Primary Completion	2028-08-01 (estimated)
Study Completion	2028-08-01 (estimated)
Updated on ClinicalTrials.gov	2026-05-26