An excerpt from Bloomberg Businessweek -
Fish Skin for Human Wounds: Iceland’s Pioneering Treatment
The FDA-approved skin substitute reduces inflammation and transforms chronic wounds into acute injuries.
By Lois Parshley
The materials in fish skin, particularly omega-3 fatty acids, yield natural anti-inflammatory effects that speed healing. When placed on wounds, the product, made from dried and processed fish skin, works as an extracellular matrix, a group of proteins and starches that plays a crucial role in recovery. In a healthy person, a matrix surrounds cells and binds them to tissue, generating the growth of new epidermis. But in chronic wounds, this natural structure fails to form. So like a garden trellis, the fish skin provides the body’s own cells a structure to grow around so they can form healthy tissue, gradually becoming incorporated into the closing wound.
Some six and a half million Americans suffer from chronic wounds, whether related to vascular disease, diabetes, or complications from normal procedures. The five-year survival rate is 54 percent, compared with 88 percent for breast cancer, and treatments cost more than $25 billion a year. That total is steadily rising, in part because of a graying population. But precisely because many patients suffering from such wounds tend to be old, and many are also poor, they don’t get much attention.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-06-27/fish-skin-may-be-the-answer-to-chronic-wounds
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