International   

Body power to heal

Ian Sample

London: Scientists have discovered how the human body harnesses the power of electricity to heal cuts and grazes — an effect they manipulated to speed up wound healing dramatically.

In what amounts to the modern rediscovery of an old medical curiosity, the finding raises hopes for revolutionary treatments to patch up injured patients in hours instead of days.

In preliminary laboratory tests, researchers showed that, by controlling the weak electrical fields that arise naturally at wound sites, they could direct cells to either close or open up a wound at the flick of a switch. By making the cells move faster, they were able to speed up wound healing by 50 per cent.

The role of electricity in wound healing has received scant attention from the scientific community since the German physiologist Emil Du Bois-Reymond cut his arm and measured the electrical field across the wound in the mid-1800s. But in the journal Nature on Thursday, an international team of scientists not only confirmed the effect but also unravels the genetic machinery behind it.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Israel orders heavier air attacks
U.K. a "staging post" for arms for Israel
Sri Lanka launches air strikes in north, east
Chavez finalises Russian arms deal
Fidel Castro comes home to celebrate the revolution
Body power to heal
27 killed in Baghdad blast
Nepal pact envisages permanent peace
Migrants head for Spain
Focus on manuscripts
Manmohan's move to avert ASEAN crisis
U.S. House votes for nuclear deal
U.S. House rejects six amendments

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu