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Updated: Apr 7, 2026
Digital Planimetry for Assessing Wound Closure Kinetics in a Mouse Model
Published on: January 10, 2025
Body weight as a confounder inversely correlating with wound closure. A retrospective analysis of observations in
Paulina Słonimska1, Jakub Baczyński-Keller2, Piotr Sass2
1Laboratory for Regenerative Biotechnology, Gdańsk University of Technology, Gdańsk, Poland; Laboratory of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, Division of Clinical Anatomy, Medical University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk, Poland.
Purpose:
The impact of body weight on wound healing is well established in obesity but remains an unexplored aspect in normal-weight organisms. The extensive data we gathered using murine wound models provided a unique opportunity to address this question by retrospective data analysis.
Materials/Methods:
Wound closure data were obtained in two models: a 2-mm ear pinna punch and a 6-mm dorsal skin excision, in 8-10-weeks-old BALB/c strain females, exclusively from control experiments in which animals received vehicle alone. The analyses included 132 mice examined in the ear pinna and 58 in the dorsal skin models, with weights ranging from 15.6 to 25.9 g, with a mean of approximately 20 g at the beginning of the experiments.
Results:
Linear regression models revealed inverse and statistically significant correlations between body weight and wound closure in the ear pinna (R = -0.185, slope = 0.0209, p = 2.52E-03) and dorsal skin (R = -0.266, slope = 0.0260, p = 4.08E-03). The correlations were consistent with significant differences in mean wound closure between extreme quartiles in the ear pinna (62.6% vs. 53.6%, p = 5.79E-03) and the dorsal skin model (81.4% vs 68.4%, p = 1.40E-03).
Conclusions:
Our retrospective study provides a methodological clue that body weight should be included in wound healing experiment designs and data interpretation. The finding delineates a promising research model for skin wound healing and tissue regeneration research. Such a model could involve omics comparisons between animals with lower and higher body weights to identify molecular signatures of improved wound healing within physiological norms, as well as molecular factors promoting tissue regeneration.
