Novel regenerative bandage may heal diabetics' wounds faster
New York, June 12: Your painful, hard-to-treat sores may soon be a thing of the past as scientists have developed a regenerative bandage that may quickly heal them without using drugs, an advance which may help make healing of wounds in diabetics faster.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the bandage healed diabetic wounds 33 per cent faster than one of the most popular bandages currently on the market.
"The novelty is that we identified a segment of a protein in skin that is important to wound healing, made the segment and incorporated it into an antioxidant molecule that self-aggregates at body temperature to create a scaffold that facilitates the body's ability to regenerate tissue at the wound site," said lead author Guillermo Ameer from the Northwestern University in Illinois, US.
The logic behind the regenerative bandage is laminin -- a protein found in most of the body's tissues including the skin.
Laminin sends signals to cells, encouraging them to differentiate, migrate and adhere to one another. The team identified a segment of laminin -- 12 amino acids in length -- called A5G81 that is critical for the wound-healing process.
They incorporated A5G81 into an antioxidant hydrogel bandage that it previously developed in the laboratory. The antioxidant nature also helps counters inflammation.
Hydrogel liquid can form the exact shape of the wound which makes this bandage better than others.
"Wounds have irregular shapes and depths. Our liquid can fill any shape and then stay in place. Other bandages are mostly based on collagen films or sponges that can move around and shift away from the wound site," Ameer said.
The team also used animal models to test the effectiveness and found no adverse effects of the bandage on the animals.
Ameer also added that their bandage can be rinsed off with cool saline, so the regenerating tissue remains undisturbed.
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MP: 7-year-old girl raped and murdered; minor relative detained
Barwani (MP), Jan 28 (PTI) Police on Wednesday detained a 17-year-old relative of a seven-year-old girl in Barwani district of Madhya Pradesh for allegedly raping her and killing her by throwing her into a canal, a police official said.
Superintendent of Police Jagdish Dawar told reporters that the body of the child was recovered from the Indira Sagar Canal on January 26, following information from residents of a village in the Rajpur police station area of the district.
He said the post-mortem report concluded severe injuries to the girl’s private parts and attributed her death to drowning.
Dawar said a 17-year-old boy, a close relative of the girl, has been detained in connection with the rape-murder.
The teenager told the police that he kidnapped the girl from her home on the night of January 25 while her family members were asleep, took her to a nearby canal and raped her, according to the official.
When the girl started screaming during the sexual assault, the minor boy allegedly threw her into the canal, with the intention of killing her. The child drowned in the water body, the official said.
The detained minor will be produced in a juvenile court.
A case has been registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and an investigation is underway, he added.
