Scientists find a way to accelerate wound healing in diabetes

Researchers from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana have discovered markers that could be key to the impaired wound healing seen in diabetes, suggesting a new way to treat patients with these injuries.

One major problem for those with diabetes is that they often have trouble with wound healing, with wounds taking longer to heal and becoming infected more often. Currently, there is no specific treatment for these wounds, and around 66,000 diabetic people in the US undergo lower-limb amputation each year due to unhealed wounds.

Wound healing is normally helped by matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), a group of enzymes that remodel the extracellular matrix. However, some MMPs can be detrimental to wound healing. These MMPs are altered in diabetes and therefore slow wound healing. Previously there was no way to tell which forms of MMP were contributing to this slowed wound healing in diabetes.

In this new study scientists have used a novel resin that binds only to the active MMPs and have found different active MMPs in mice with diabetic-type wounds. MMP-8 and MMP-9 were active in wounds for both normal and diabetic-type mice. However, in the diabetic-type mice, levels of MMP-9 were greatly elevated, suggesting that this could be the contributing factor to slower wound healing.

To confirm this, the researchers applied selective inhibitors of these MMPs to the wounds. Treating the wound with an MMP-9 inhibitor sped up wound healing in the diabetic type mice to an equivalent of that the normal mice. On the other hand, treating the wound with an MMP-8 inhibitor slowed wound healing. This shows that MMP-9 impairs wound healing while MMP-8 helps it. The researchers suggest that MMP-9 inhibitors could therefore be used as treatment for diabetic wounds.

Article: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cb4005468?prevSearch=Mobashery&searchHistoryKey