Scientists have found a way to heal wounds three times faster: how it works
Doctors have discovered a way to treat wounds three times faster using electricity. The new technique will be used to heal chronic wounds, which are serious health problems and can even lead to amputation.
According to ScienceAalert, an international team from Sweden and Germany has developed a method that uses electrical stimulation to speed up the healing process. The work was published in the journal Lab on a Chip.
The researchers used one of the properties of skin cells - electrotaxis, that is, the ability to "migrate" in electric fields in a targeted manner. This means that if a petri dish with skin cells is placed in an electric field, the cells stop moving randomly and start moving in one direction.
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Using a tiny chip, the researchers could compare wound healing on artificial skin by stimulating one wound with electricity and allowing the other to heal without electricity. The differences were striking: the wound that had been electrically stimulated healed three times faster than the control wound.
A protein that causes tumor growth has been used to treat non-healing wounds. Scientists have synthesized a compound that will help heal chronic wounds in diabetics. Interestingly, the stimulation also helped heal wounds on artificial skin, whose cells had metabolic changes that occur in diabetes. As a result, the "diseased" skin healed almost as fast as normal "healthy" skin.
In the future, the researchers plan to develop a more individualized approach to treating each wound by finding a way to "scan" wounds and adapt the stimulation to a specific case.
We invite you to learn about the new invention of scientists, which will not harm even children who may swallow it.
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