An electric wound dressing can help heal injuries faster than existing methods, according to tests in rats.
Previous research has found that applying electric fields across a cut can speed up wound healing, but this usually requires large and specialised equipment.
Because of this, Guang Yao at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu and his colleagues wanted to develop an alternative that could be applied in a similar way to traditional wound dressings. “Non-invasive, efficient, cost-effective and convenient approaches are always desired for treating skin wounds,” he says.
The dressing is made up of four layers. The bottom layer is made from an electrically charged plastic that produces an electric field through static contact with the skin. Next is a layer of flexible silicone rubber gel that moulds to the skin’s curvature, and then a layer of shape memory alloy that pushes the two sides of the wound together. A second layer of flexible gel completes the dressing, which is just 0.2 millimetres thick in totalThe team tested the wound-healing properties of the dressing on around 50 rats. They anaesthetised the rats before giving each either a 1-centimetre-long linear wound or a 0.8-centimetre-diameter circular wound and then either applying the new dressing, applying a standard dressing or leaving them to heal by themselves.
The circular wounds that received the electric dressing were 96.8 per cent closed after eight days, compared with between 76.4 and 79.9 per cent closed with other dressings, and 45.9 per cent closed for wounds that weren’t dressed. The straight wounds healed faster than round ones because they have less “defect tissue”, says Yao, but the relative performance was similar. “We are optimising the design of devices for more shaped wounds, including irregular shapes,” says Yao. The team is also doing preclinical preparations to prepare for human trials.
“The study has a really interesting design idea to use electrostatic thin film to enhance the wound closure and stop bacterial infections,” says Vi Khanh Truong at Flinders University, Australia. “However, the cost may be a biggest hindrance for this design.” Yao declined to say how much the dressing costs to manufacture, but says “it is not expensive”.
A corkscrew-shaped microrobot inspired by the tails of bacteria like E. coli can swim through blood vessels and help unblock clots.
Li Zhang at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and his colleagues inserted the robot into a synthetic vein filled with pig’s blood, and found it made blood clot-busting drugs work nearly five times better than the drug by itself.
“The helical structure is just like a propeller, so [the robot] can deliver the cargo from point A to …
Vitamin D supplements really do prevent people developing an autoimmune disease, at least for those over 50, in a study providing the first evidence of a causal link between the two.
Previous studies on the effect of vitamin D on autoimmune conditions have looked at vitamin D levels in those with an autoimmune disease or in those who go on to develop one. Other studies have hinted at the supplement’s beneficial effects on the immune system.
“We know vitamin D does all kinds of wonderful things for the immune system in animal studies,” says Karen Costenbader at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “But we have never proven before that giving vitamin D can prevent autoimmune disease.”
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Costenbader and her colleagues randomly split nearly 26,000 people in the US who were 50 or over into two groups, giving them either vitamin D supplements or a placebo.
“The great thing about randomised trials is they really answer the question of causation,” says Costenbader.
The team tracked the participants for around five years to measure the development of autoimmune conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune thyroid disease and psoriasis
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