Nearly sixteen million Americans have diabetes a third of whom are unaware they have the disease. Diabetes claims more lives each year than either AIDS or breast cancer nearly 200,000 people died from diabetes last year alone, while close to 70,000 lower limbs are amputated each year due to complications from diabetes. Podiatrists report that new therapeutic treatments reduce healing time, infection, hospitalization, and amputation while improving the quality of life. If left unattended, an ulcer can quickly become infected and lead to serious consequences such as amputation. In the study, the doctors found that growth factors and bioengineered skin may be the most promising treatments for diabetic foot wounds.
Growth factors are extracts from human skin, platelets, or collagen.
They are responsible for stimulating cell movement to help the diabetic foot wound mature and close faster. These treatments were tested on 13 patients with diabetic foot wounds over a twenty-week period and results proved that at 12 weeks the wounds had healed by 50 percent. When we combine traditional approaches, such as removing pressure from the wound, with the new high-tech treatments, then we ll have what I believe is a winning combination to reduce the needless number of lower extremity amputations in this country and throughout the developed world. Now, investigators are continuing to enhance the process of wound healing through bioengineered skin, or skin equivalents from human foreskin donors. Like growth factors, the bioengineered skin would be applied to the diabetic foot ulcer.