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Hope for gentle healing: small wound (symbolic image)

Photo: Sol de Zuasnabar Brebbia / Getty Images

An international research team from Australia, Japan, Great Britain and the USA reports a “significant breakthrough” with a new method for treating chronic wounds.

According to its own information, after ten years of research, the group was able to demonstrate that wound healing gels activated with plasma naturally kill infectious bacteria in diabetic foot ulcers and at the same time activate the body's own defense system.

Their results were published in the specialist magazine “Advanced Functional Materials”.

This is an urgently needed solution for a “neglected global pandemic,” according to a statement from the British University of Sheffield on Wednesday.

More than half a billion people worldwide suffer from diabetes, and 30 percent of them will develop a foot ulcer, a festering wound, in their lifetime.

In England alone, 60,000 to 75,000 patients per week would have to be treated - and because current treatments would not help, 7,000 would be amputated per year.

"Chronic wounds are usually treated with antibiotics or silver dressings," explained lead author Endre Szili from the University of South Australia, but both methods have disadvantages: bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, and materials containing silver are being abandoned in Europe, for example, because of their cell-damaging effects.

The new method called plasma-activated hydrogel therapy (PAHT), on the other hand, is ecologically harmless, explained the plasma doctor.

It uses substances naturally occurring in air and water and leaves only non-toxic, biodegradable residues.

Cold plasma – an electrically ionized gas – activates nitrogen and oxygen from the surrounding air in a water-containing gel on the wound.

Szili's team now wants to have found the right level of chemical oxidants for the disinfectant effect.

According to the new study, the common bacteria E.coli and P.aeruginosa were proven to be killed.

The medical benefits of the plasma method have already been proven in several clinical studies, and German researchers also use it.

The study focused on diabetic foot ulcers.

But the technology could be transferred to all chronic wounds and internal infections, says Szili.

It may even be possible to treat tumors in the future.

Further studies are planned to optimize the method.

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