Stem Cell Treatment for Wound Healing– The skin acts as a barrier for us, protecting our body from external infection, radiation, and extremes of temperature. Wounds occur when the skin is broken or damaged because of injury, cuts, burns, poor blood circulation, which can lead to obstruction of the normal function and structure of the skin. If these wounds are not treated in time, they can advance into chronic wounds. The skin is composed of 3 main layers-Epidermis, Dermis, and Subcutaneous layers.
Stem Cell Treatment for Wound Healing- Causes and Symptoms:
The normal healing of the wounds is achieved through three major steps by the body namely inflammation, proliferation and remodeling. Keratinocytes, Melanocytes, Langerhans cells and Merkel cells are the major participants in the process of wound healing. The most obvious outcome of a wound are the pain, swelling, and bleeding.
Adipose stem cells appear to enhance the healing process of the wounds when provided with the PRP injections. Adipose tissue comprises numerous numbers of cells including adipocytes, smooth muscle cells, fibroblasts, macrophages, endothelial cells, and lymphocytes, as well as adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs). ASCs are a class of mesenchymal stem cells and they are able to differentiate into bone, cartilage, tendon, and fat, provided they are cultured under the necessary conditions. They are preferred over the other stem cells due to their wide availability and relative ease of harvesting sufficient cell numbers for regeneration of skin at the injured area. It has been widely seen by scientists that these cells help in promoting the production of human skin fibroblasts at the site by secretion of paracrine factors, which ultimately increase the rate of wound healing, as well as help, is enhancing the faster wound closure. Such evidence demonstrates the immense promise of ASCs in future wound management.
The use of PRP (Platelet Rich Plasma) is a very effective technique and when it is employed with the ASCs at the wound area they promote healing of the soft tissues as well as the wounds. PRP contains at least seven growth factors including epidermal growth factor, platelet-derived growth factor, transforming growth factor-beta, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), fibroblast growth factor, insulin-like growth factor, and keratinocyte growth factor. The therapeutic effect of PRP occurs because of the high concentration of these growth factors compared with that in normal plasma for faster tissue healing and enhances the proliferation of the human adipose-derived stem cells. The PRP injections are prepared from the patient’s own peripheral blood under strict aseptic conditions and after injecting these activated platelets around the wound area, they stimulate the microenvironment, cytokines, resident stem cells and the injected adipose derived stem cells to boost healing processes such as inflammation, repair, and remodeling. So far no adverse effects have been seen after the PRP treatment and as these cells are extracted from the patient’s own blood, no adverse reaction occurs. This therapy has shown promising results in severe wounds like Gastric Ulcers, Pressure ulcers, Diabetic foot and skin burns.
The advantages of Adipose-derived Stem Cell Treatment with PRP injections over others is that they are less painful, less intrusive, easier to extract, no side effects or adverse effects and can be obtained in larger quantity from adipose tissue (50-1000 times more cells than Bone Marrow).