Using Electricity to Heal

ganjadude writes to tell us that while the idea of using electricity to heal wounds was first reported 150 years ago by Emil Du Bois-Reymond, modern scientists may have found a way to practically apply this idea. From the article: "The researchers grew layers of mouse cells and larger tissues, such as corneas, in the lab. After 'wounding' these tissues, they applied varying electric fields to them, and found they could accelerate or completely halt the healing process depending on the orientation and strength of the field."

Comments

Awesome

[BilZ0r]

That's actually quite an awesome paper. It seems that when a wound is made, it makes a low resistance shunt across skin, which normally has a voltage difference across it. This stimulates wound healing activity. The current peaks at 10 microA cm-2 and persisted at 4-8 microA cm-2, with all the current vector pointing towards the wound center. This paper shows not only that that effect is easily demonstrated in vitro, but what are the molecular mediators of it, see the original article here.

Already out there

[bobllama]

There's already a company that's commercializing this - http://www.biofisica.com/. They have some pretty interesting information on their site for anyone interested in more detail. I'm not associated with them in anyway, just happened to see them present at an event once.