Electrical stimulation could accelerate the healing of chronic wounds in diabetics and the elderly.
- Diabetic or elderly patients face the problem of wound healing.
- Electrical stimulation can guide skin cells to accelerate healing.
- This technique opens the way to individualized treatment of chronic wounds.
People with diabetes or the elderly often face problems with wound healing. Due to a decrease in blood circulation, the skin of diabetic patients is often thinner and drier which makes it more difficult for wounds to heal. Chronic wounds are a major health problem that can even lead to amputation in extreme cases.
Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Freiburg in Germany, worked from a hypothesis that electrical stimulation of damaged skin can be used to heal wounds.
Electrically heal skin cells
Skin cells are electrotactic, which means that they “migrate” directionally in electric fields. This means that if an electric field is placed in a petri dish with skin cells, the cells stop moving randomly and start moving in the same direction. This principle can be used to electrically guide cells to accelerate wound healing.
The new research shows that wounds on cultured skin cells heal three times faster when stimulated with an electric current. This promising method could help diabetic patients and the elderly with chronic wounds heal faster and improve their quality of life. Although this research is still ongoing, electrical stimulation may become a crucial tool for regulating wound healing rates and reducing associated healthcare costs.
Develop an individualized treatment concept
The researchers want to develop a concept that can “scan” the wounds and adapt the stimulation according to each case in order to achieve individualized treatments. This approach could significantly improve the healing rates of chronic wounds. Although the research is still in its infancy, it appears that electrical stimulation has the potential to become an important tool in the management of diabetic and chronic wounds.
