A novel collagen hydrogel loaded with primary brown sugar for accelerating burn wound healing by a synergistic...

Severe skin burns present complex clinical challenges, including delayed healing and scar formation. As the first-extracted product of sugarcane, brown sugar has a long application history in Chinese traditional medicine. Inspired by its medicinal benefits, this study developed a collagen-based hydrogel co-loaded with brown sugar and epicatechin (COL-BS-EC) and evaluated its synergistic enhancement of therapeutic potential for promoting burn regenerative healing by comparison with comprehensive control groups and explored its relevant mechanisms involving the synergistic actions of non-sucrose components. Such a designed hydrogel showed potent species-selective antibacterial activity, particularly against S. aureus, and high DPPH radical scavenging. In vitro assays confirmed significant reductions in pro-inflammatory TNF-α and increases in anti-inflammatory IL-10, alongside enhanced fibroblast migration and proliferation. The experimental results from burn models on mice and rats revealed that COL-BS-EC group accelerated the wound closure by reducing the residual wound area to about 6% on Day 14, promoted organized collagen deposition of 32% versus 13% in the control group and doubled neo vessel density. This study provides a modern scientific validation for the synergistic therapy efficacy of brown sugar for wound tissue and explores the potential of this concept applied to biomaterial design for clinical burn wounds.