Effects of Plasma-Activated Water on Skin Wound Healing in Mice

Abstract

Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) has been widely used in biomedicine during the last two decades. While direct plasma treatment has been reported to promote wound healing, its application can be uneven and inconvenient. In this study, we first activated water with a portable dielectric barrier discharge plasma device and evaluated the inactivation effect of plasma-activated water (PAW) on several kinds of bacteria that commonly infect wounds. The results show that PAW can effectively inactivate these bacteria. Then, we activated tap water and examined the efficacy of PAW on wound healing in a mouse model of full-thickness skin wounds. We found that wound healing in mice treated with PAW was significantly faster compared with the control group. Histological analysis of the skin tissue of mice wounds showed a significant reduction in the number of inflammatory cells in the PAW treatment group. To identify the possible mechanism by which PAW promotes wound healing, we analyzed changes in the profiles of wound bacteria after PAW treatment. The results show that PAW can significantly reduce the abundance of wound bacteria in the treatment group. The results of biochemical blood tests and histological analysis of major internal organs in the mice show that PAW had no obvious side effects. Taken together, these results indicate that PAW may be a new and effective method for promoting wound healing without side effects.

Antimicrobial Effect of Plasma-Activated Tap Water on Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, and Candida albicans

“…In recent years, plasma-activated water (PAW) has gained prominence due to its application in medicine [1][2][3], mainly due to the effects of inactivation in microbial species caused basically by the stimulation of high biochemical and biological activities that alter the properties of water due to its exposure to plasma [4][5][6][7][8]. This plasma water activation technique is inexpensive and environmentally friendly since it is free of chemicals [9].…”

Plasma-Activated Saline Promotes Antibiotic Treatment of Systemic Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Infection

“…In the murine model, the effect of PAS was complicated due to the complex biological systems. At present, studies on the application of plasma-activated liquid on infectious disease are focused on the treatment of wound infections, however, the injection of plasma-activated liquid for the treatment of internal infection has not been reported [ 60 , 61 ]. Several previous studies have demonstrated that plasma-activated medium produced by the dielectric barrier discharge device with the working gas of oxygen and air could induce the death of immunogenic cells by activating the innate immune system [ 32 , 62 , 63 ].…”

Plasma-Activated Water Promotes Wound Healing by Regulating Inflammatory Responses

“…The PAW equipment used here is a portable plasma equipment, so the equipment can be brought to the use site to prepare the required PAW to reduce the attenuation of active particles in the PAW. Our previous research has proven that PAW can effectively inactivate and reduce the bacterial load of common bacteria in wound infections, thereby promoting wound healing [34]. In order to further illustrate the effect of PAW on wound healing, we have also tested the ROS and RNS that play very important roles in biomedicine [37,38] in the PAW.…”

“…Timely treatment can also help avoid reductions in the biological effectivity of PAW due to time delays. In our previous research, we proved that the application of the PAW prepared with this portable device for 5 min can inactivate the most common bacteria present in wound infections [34]. In this paper, firstly, some discharge characteristics of the portable plasma equipment, and the concentrations of several important particles in the PAW, are tested.…”