Effects of electrically charged particles in enhancement of rat wound healing

Many studies have show that various growth factors enhance wound healing in animal models. However, growth factors are expensive and complex and their wound pharmacokinetics are unknown. The clinical trials with growth factors in the treatment of chronic wounds have produced unsuccessful results. A viable alternative to growth factors may be certain biomaterials such as hydrophilic, carbohydrate beads.

Positively charged, negatively charged, or uncharged beads were applied to paired 6-cm rat incisions. The following key aspects of the wound healing process were examined: wound breaking strength and histological analysis.

Our data show that wounds treated with positively charged, DEAE Sephadez beads had a 46-50% (P < 0.001) increase in breaking strength over untreated control wounds. A variety of other positively charged, anion exchange materials also elicited a wound healing response, despite the fact that the positively charged chemical moieties as well as the bead matrix were different. In conjunction with the increase in wound breaking strength, an increase in wound macrophage was observed in wounds treated with anion exchangers (P < 0.01). Negatively charged or uncharged beads showed no significant difference from the untreated controls.

We conclude from this study that the enhancement of wound healing seen with positively charged beads is due principally to the positive charge on the beads; we postulate that the anion exchange between the positively charged beads and tissue is responsible for this enhancement.