Scientists have developed a new technology for the treatment of chronic wounds and ulcers. This was reported by the press service of the Chalmers University of Technology.
Most skin lesions in healthy people heal on their own even though a scar is formed. However, the ability to heal wounds is impaired in people with diabetes, spinal cord injury, or poor circulation. This means a greater risk of infection, which can lead to tissue necrosis and limb amputation.
To overcome these problems, Maria Asplund and her colleagues decided to develop a method for treating such wounds with electricity. Scientists have long noticed that skin cells tend to migrate under the influence of an electric field. This means that if an electric field is placed in a Petri dish with skin cells, the cells will stop moving randomly and start moving in one direction. However, in practice it is very difficult to force cells to migrate in the desired direction.
“To find out exactly how it works on wounds, we developed a kind of biochip in which we culture skin cells and then create small wounds in it. We then stimulate a wound with an electric field and as a result it heals three times faster than a similar wound without stimulation,” says the scientist.
When simulating diabetic skin lesions, electrical stimulation made it possible to achieve an almost healthy healing rate. At the same time, the voltage did not exceed 200 millivolts and could not damage the cells. The key to the collective use of this technology is the individual selection of the parameters available for each wound.
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