Month: January 2019

After a flesh wound, skin cells march forward to close the gap and repair the injury. Findings from a team led by Leah Vardy at A*STAR’s Skin Research Institute of Singapore now demonstrate how a carefully regulated set of molecular cues helps coordinate this healing migration … Vardy was particularly interested in a trio of organic molecules known as polyamines, which play a role in cellular proliferation. “They are well studied in cancer, but much less is known about how changes in their levels can drive normal … read more

WHITSETT, N.C., Jan. 15, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Medical device manufacturer medi USA announced the launch of its new ready-to-wear circaid® juxtalite® hd. The juxtalite hd is an inelastic compression wrap for the management of venous disease and venous leg ulcers for patients with moderate to severe edema … Designed with patented, juxtaposing band technology and made with a soft but strong fabric, the juxtalite hd applies graduated compression over the entire lower leg. The effortless juxtaposing bands promote patient self-management and improve quality of life, enabling patients to easily adjust their compression wrap throughout the day and expedite the wound healing process. The juxtalite hd comes with a pair of new circaid compressive undersocks, which apply compression to the foot and ankle areas to effectively manage foot and ankle swelling. circaid products are designed with a patented, Built-In-Pressure System™ (BPS™) that enables multiple, measurable, targeted compression ranges in a single product … read more

HMP, a leader in healthcare events and education, today announced twelve new course locations for the 2019 Wound Certification Prep Course (WCPC), the leading comprehensive wound care training program. Based upon the ongoing demand for clinicians to possess increased specialized knowledge in wound management, WCPC will be expanding its course to 12 cities nationwide, including San Francisco, Philadelphia, Nashville, and Chicago. Furthermore, three of the 12 programs will be co-located with HMP’s leading medical conferences: the Symposium on Advanced Wound Care (SAWC) Spring and Fall meetings, the world’s largest wound care educational events; and the Amputation Prevention Symposium (AMP) … read more

Orpyx’s foot sensor technology is installed in foot insoles and monitors foot pressure on diabetic patients and those with foot numbness. The tech will then send alerts to smartphones or smartwatches when a person is at risk for a foot injury, so preventative actions can be taken. The company indicated that 25 percent of people with diabetes develop foot ulcers over their lifetime, with one in five of those people experiencing complications that lead to amputation … read more

Scientists have created a ‘bio-scaffold’ that could speed up the healing of wounds.

 

In a world first, the researchers designed materials that ‘talk’ to the body’s injured tissue to support its repair through every stage of the healing process.

 

Known as traction force-activated payloads (TrAPs), the scientists believe the technique will have ‘far-reaching uses’ on everything from broken bones to diabetic foot ulcers.

 

TrAPs were designed by scientists at Imperial College London in a study led by Dr Ben Almquist from the department of bioengineering.

 

While collagen sponges are already used on burns and scaffold-like implants help to strengthen broken bones, the researchers felt a material should be created that met the changing needs of damaged tissue as it goes through the healing process … read more

New research, published in the journal Advanced Materials, paves the way for “a new generation of materials that actively work with tissues to drive [wound] healing.” … As more and more surgical procedures are performed in the United States, the number of surgical site infections is also on the rise … Chronic wounds that do not heal — such as those that occur in diabetes — often host a wide range of bacteria in the form of a biofilm … Such biofilm bacteria are often very resilient to treatment, and antimicrobial resistance only increases the possibility that these wounds become infected … read more

     of intralesional epidermal growth factor in patients with diabetic foot ulcers

 

Authors assessed 36 feet of 34 candidates (mean age 61 ± 13.7 years) to examine the long-term consequences of intralesional epidermal growth factor injections in the treatment of diabetic foot ulcers. They observed participants’ demographics, Wagner classifications, recurrence and amputation rates, 55.40 ± 12.15 of Foot Function Index, Short Form 36, and 65.92 ± 17.56 of American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons Foot and Ankle Module scores at the final follow-up review. They noted a complete response of wound closure in 87.9% of lesions with granulation tissue greater than 75%. The meantime of wound closure was recorded from 25 to 72 days. Toe amputation was performed in only 2 participants due to ischemic necrosis, suggesting a low recurrence and concise amputation rate with complete wound healing …. read more

A retrospective study of 513 cases from a single Centre in the Northern Territory of Australia

Diabetic foot ulcers (DFU) are a common problem in longstanding diabetes. However, mortality outcomes in Australian patients with DFU are still unclear … All patients with DFU presenting for the first time to the Multi-Disciplinary Foot Clinic (MDFC) at Royal Darwin Hospital, Northern Territory Australia, between January 2003 and June 2015 were included in this study … read more

     KB103, for Wound Healing

 

All four patients with dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (DEB) enrolled in a Phase 2 study testing the safety and efficacy of Krystal Biotech’s topical gene therapy candidate KB103 have received the treatment.

 

Results are expected to be known by mid-year.

 

The protein type 7 collagen (Col7) binds the two top layers of the skin, and its deficit results in blisters and wounds. Mutations in the Col7A1 gene encoding Col7 results in either non-working or insufficient levels of Col7, causing the skin blistering observed in DEB patients.

 

KB103 is a gene therapy candidate designed to deliver functional Col7 directly to the impacted cells with the help of a modified herpes simplex virus (HSV-1;  this modified virus is unable to cause disease).

 

In the ongoing six-month study (NCT03536143; GEM-1), underway at Stanford University, KB103 or placebo were applied directly to skin wounds (topical administration) of four DEB patients, two adults and two children (age 5 or older) … read more

The healing of wounded skin in diabetes can be sped up by more than 50 percent using injections of stem cells taken from bone marrow, a new study in mice shows.

 

The research, led by scientists at NYU School of Medicine, focused on a chain of events in diabetes that makes skin sores more likely to form and less likely to heal.

 

Namely, the body’s failure in diabetes to break down dietary sugar creates molecules called free radicals that can wreak havoc on cells and damage their DNA. These free radicals also trigger an inrush of immune cells and chemicals meant to fight infection that, researchers say, instead kill normal cells and cause diabetic skin ulcers. These wounds, they note, can take twice as long to heal as in healthy mammals and are prone to infection.

 

Published in the January issue of the journal Diabetes, the study showed that the injected stem cells restore a cell signaling pathway called Nrf2/Keap1, recently shown by the NYU team to be disrupted in diabetes. The rebalancing brought on by stem cell therapy, the researchers say, decreased wound healing time to 21 days in treated diabetic mice compared with 32 days in untreated diabetic mice. By contrast, normal mouse skin wounds usually heal in 14 days.

 

“Our study shows that in mice, stem-cell-based therapies can stimulate the Nrf2/Keap1 pathway to counteract … read more

Using electricity to treat skin wounds may sound unconventional, but scientists in China and the US have developed a self-powered bandage that accelerated wound healing in rats. The findings are published in the journal ACS Nano. Skin has a remarkable ability to heal itself, but in some people, such as those suffering from diabetes, wounds heal very slowly or not at all. Such patients are thus at risk of chronic pain, infection and scarring. Doctors have explored various approaches to help chronic wounds heal, including bandaging, dressing, exposure to oxygen and growth-factor therapy, but these methods often show limited effectiveness. Meanwhile, as early as the 1960s, researchers have observed that electrical stimulation could help skin wounds heal. However, the equipment for generating an electric field is often large and may require patient hospitalization … Read more

DeRoyal’s Continuum solution consists of RFID tags and GPS units attached to negative pressure wound pumps, so that each pump can be tracked from the time it is assigned to a patient until that individual is finished using the pump at home, following discharge … Health-care technology company DeRoyal has released a solution for hospitals employing its Continuum UHF RFID-based platform, for use in tracking pumps that are utilized for negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT). The system leverages RFID technology built into cabinets, as well as tags and GPS technology—along with cellular and satellite connections—built into pump units to identify where they are located in real time. The solution enables the pumps to be used at hospitals, and to travel with patients after they are discharged, with insurance companies billed accordingly … read more

In mid-November 2018, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services finally released new physical activity guidelines (as a 2nd edition) to update their previous set from a decade before. Various activity guidelines for adults with diabetes have been updated several times in the interim, including a 2010 position statement on exercising with type 2 diabetes published jointly by the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Diabetes Association; a 2016 ADA position statement on exercise and physical activity for all types of diabetes ; and a consensus statement on being active with type 1 diabetes published in The Lancet in 2017  … In those three sets of recommendations specific to diabetes, it was clear that everyone with diabetes can benefit from being more regularly active … read more

Advancements in molecular microbiology, microscopy technology, and techniques for study of bacteria have increased the ability to identify the existence of biofilms, but there still remains the unknown, such as differentiating between planktonic bacteria and biofilm.¹ Chronic non-healing wounds harbor bacteria across the wound etiology classification.^2–4 Malone et al. determined that the prevalence of biofilms in chronic wounds was 78.2% (confidence interval, 61.6–89, P < 0.002).² The development of biofilms moves through a common pattern: attachment, microcolony formation, maturation, and dispersion. The initial attachment is reversible, but the attachment becomes stronger as cells multiply and change their gene expressions. This cell communication process is referred to as quorum sensing, allowing cells to survive … read more

     Reproducibility and accuracy of a wound measurement app

 

The wounds of 87 patients were measured using the Swift Wound app and a ruler. The skin surface temperature of 37 patients was also measured using an infrared FLIR^™ camera integrated with the Swift Wound app and using the clinically accepted reference thermometer Exergen DermaTemp 1001. Accuracy measurements were determined by assessing differences in surface area measurements of 15 plastic wounds between a digital planimeter of known accuracy and the Swift Wound app. To evaluate the impact of training on the reproducibility of the Swift Wound app measurements, three novice raters with no wound care training, measured the length, width and area of 12 plastic model wounds using the app. High inter-rater reliabilities (ICC = 0.97–1.00) and high accuracies were obtained using the Swift Wound app across raters of different levels of training in wound care. The ruler method also yielded reliable wound measurements (ICC = 0.92–0.97), albeit lower than that of the Swift Wound app. Furthermore, there was no statistical difference between the temperature differences measured using the infrared camera and the clinically tested reference thermometer … read more

     and Managing Wound Bioburden

 

Advancements in molecular microbiology, microscopy technology, and techniques for study of bacteria have increased the ability to identify the existence of biofilms, but there still remains the unknown, such as differentiating between planktonic bacteria and biofilm.¹ Chronic non-healing wounds harbor bacteria across the wound etiology classification.^2–4 Malone et al. determined that the prevalence of biofilms in chronic wounds was 78.2% (confidence interval, 61.6–89, P < 0.002).² The development of biofilms moves through a common pattern: attachment, microcolony formation, maturation, and dispersion. The initial attachment is reversible, but the attachment becomes stronger as cells multiply and change their gene expressions. This cell communication process is referred to as quorum sensing, allowing cells to survive … read more