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    03 August 2012| last updated at 09:05AM

    Scientists treat ulcers with 'spray-on skin'



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    PARIS: Scientists said today they had developed a revolutionary “spray-on skin” treatment for venous leg ulcers — a common ailment involving a shallow, open and stubborn wound on the ankle or lower leg.

     

    Using a spray of skin cells suspended in a mixture of proteins that aid  blood clotting, the team treated 228 patients in the United States and Canada  and found it greatly improved and accelerated wound closure.
     
    “The treatment we tested in this study has the potential to vastly improve  recovery times and overall recovery from leg ulcers without the need for a skin  graft,” said researcher Herbert Slade of Healthpoint Biotherapeutics in Texas.
     
    The patients also had their wounds bound with compression bandages, the  standard treatment.
     
    Venous leg ulcers affect about one person in 500 in the UK, but the rate  increases sharply with age to one in 50 over the age of 80, said a media  statement on the report published in The Lancet medical journal.
     
    The ulcers develop when persistently high blood pressure in the veins of  the legs damages the skin. They affect mainly people who are unable to move  properly like the old and obese, and those with varicose veins.
     
    Standard treatment involves compression bandages, infection control and  wound dressing, but not all the wounds heal.
     
    Skin grafts are sometimes used, but these result in a new wound at the spot  where the graft is taken from.
     
    In a comment that accompanied the paper, scientist Matthias Augustin of the  University Medical Center Hamburg said it was crucial to find new therapies as  venous ulcers were common and burdensome to patients.
     
    “Non-healing ulcers are a substantial economic burden,” he wrote. “In  Germany, for example, annual total costs of venous leg ulcers amount to about  10,000 euros per patient.”    Spending more on treatment by including cell therapy would pay off in the  long run by improving patient healing, he argued. -- AFP

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