If you’ve ever been burned, cut, scraped or suffered from an ulcer anywhere on your skin you know how painful and time consuming the healing process can be. Ulcers most commonly found with older people just above the ankle can be painful as they become larger and more inflamed. These leg ulcers can take anywhere from 6 months to a year weeks to heal through compression socks, bandages, and elevation while sleeping. With the healing process in such a long frame of time it’s easy for these ulcers to become infected or worse.
In response to not only ulcers but also all types of skin wounds doctors and scientist have come together to create a spray on skin which helps wounds heal faster without the need for skin grafts or other expensive surgeries. Healthpoint Biotherapetics, a company just out of Fort Worth, Texas has come up with a solution to treat these bothersome ulcers and other types of skin cuts, scrapes, and burns with their successfully tested spray on skin treatment. The small cylinder syringe spray bottle is the product of Healthpoint Biotherepetics created by doctors and scientists which is still in the testing stage. According to Healthpoint Biotherepetics the spray currently named HP802-2547 is made up of fibroblasts, an anti-clotting agent and keratinocytes, donated skin cells. These two substances work together in creating new skin for patients in an incredibly fast amount of time. With these two substances working together they speed up the body’s ability to heal and cover a wound. This spray on skin could prove to be a significant medical breakthrough if it passes through the testing stage as skin graphs and other types of surgeries can be costly and time consuming. Time is cut significantly on wounds healing through the spray on skin because the minimal effort of spraying the substance on the wound and wrapping it in bandages is all that is needed. Although this may affect jobs such as plastic surgeons negatively because of how cheap the treatment is less people would have a need for plastic surgery but in a larger perspective the benefits defiantly outweigh the downfalls.
In the first successfully tested spray on treatment, patient’s wounds and ulcers were sprayed every fourteen days and after 3 months 70 percent of the patients had completely healed from the spray on skin. In the control group 46 percent of the patients who had been using a placebo spray didn’t heal any faster. The patients who sprayed every 14 days saw great results as their wounds healed in as short as 50 days compared to the control group who healed after 71 days. With a positive 21 day quicker healing process the spray on skin proved to be quite successful in its first trial. Patients using the spray on skin could visually see the wound starting to shrink almost instantly after applying the spray.
In perspective just think about the positive influence this spray could have in the medical world if it were implemented in ER’s and Hospitals. Patient’s recovery time would not only be increasingly faster but it would also cut down on pain. Burn victims especially would benefit from the spray as the healing process can be expensive with skin graphs and long term in the healing process. Ultimately this miracle spray could cut down on hospital stays and costs, and eventually could be used at home.
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This is amazing. It’s incredible to see where science has taken the medical world. To be able to formulate an agent made up of only a few chemicals and some donated cells that can drastically speed up the recovery process for wounds is absolutely stunning. The military has been using something similar to this called QuickClot® for some time now, and it just recently was made available for public use! Natural minerals within the compound cause instant coagulation, sealing even as severe a wound as a gunshot in a matter of seconds. It’s crazy what science has been able to do for the medical community.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-limb-regeneration-ins
Here’s the article it didn’t seem to work above
That is really fascinating! I find it so interesting that the pig and parts of its body can be used to help humans such as organ transplants and blood. Also not to mention the great type’s food they give us. Using extracellular matrix component is a great idea in growing back fingers. Just imagine if they can do this with fingers on such a small scale what the possibilities would be to grow back other parts of the body. I know several people who have lost fingers or toes and it can really be a handicap for them in the future. I’ve read that animals can easily grow back limbs or tails easily so why wouldn’t humans (mammals) be able to do the same. Hopefully this idea takes off and can be implemented. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-limb-regeneration-ins” >Click Here to see a really interesting article on animals and limb regeneration compared to humans.
Your blog post caught my eye because I just read a similar article http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/human-biology/extracellular-matrix.htm where scientists think they have found the answer on how to regrow fingers. In the link above it talks about how they use extracellular matrix from a pig and apply it to the damaged fingers. The concept comes from a human fetus that contains extracellular matrix in which it can repair anything that is damaged with the baby inside the fetus but it stops at birth. They believe that the extracellular matrix from the pig helped “regenerate” the extracellular matrix in the human body to repair the damaged fingers.