Inflammation trains the skin to heal faster

By SariSabban [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

In a new study it was found that inflammation trains the skin to heal faster. We knew already that inflammation is a critical stage of healing in general as it directs where the healing should take place. What is new is that it might serve an additional purpose beyond just signaling where to heal but may train skin in particular to heal at a faster rate. If it can be trained then this implies there is some sort of memory mechanism.

In experiments with mice, Shruti Naik, a postdoc, and Samantha B. Larsen, a graduate student, showed that wounds closed more than twice as fast in skin that had already experienced inflammation than in skin that had never been damaged -- even if that initial inflammatory experience had occurred as long as six months earlier, the equivalent of about 15 years for a human. Healing sped up, the team determined, because the inflammation-experienced stem cells were better at moving into the wound to repair the breach.

This process is enabled by stem cells which are left behind. This study was done on mice not humans so a direct translation of the result may not be accurate but it is a result which can provide a basis for a human study and for attempts to replicate the result. It is important that a result like this be replicated.

References

Rockefeller University. (2017, October 18). Inflammation trains the skin to heal faster. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 23, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171018132831.htm