The role of probiotics as wound healers: an overall view

Abstract

A wound is an injury to the skin or damage to the body tissue. The healing process differs between various kinds of wounds. Treatment of hard-to-heal (chronic) wounds becomes challenging for healthcare practitioners, especially if patients have underlying health complications such as diabetes. Infection of wounds is another factor that interferes with the healing process and extends its duration. Active research is being conducted into the development of advanced wound dressing technologies. These wound dressings are intended to manage the exudate, reduce bacterial infection and speed up the healing process. Probiotics have been receiving much attention because of their potential application in the clinical field, especially in diagnostics and treatment strategies of various infectious and non-infectious diseases. The host immune-modulatory response and antimicrobial activity of probiotics are expanding their role in the development of improved wound dressing technology.

Looking for the Ideal Probiotic Healing Regime

“…In this stage, lasting several weeks after injury, the granulating tissue matures and becomes a scar of high tensile strength, in parallel exerting higher resistance and flexibility. Matrix metalloproteases break down collagen III and replace it with collagen I, the primary collagen subtype in scar tissue, which further re-organizes into parallel fibrils, forming a low cellularity scar [58,62,64,66]. Since our data on probiotics is mainly based on cell cultures and excisional wound models in experimental animals, there is no published information on the long-term effects of probiotics in the healing process.…”

Probiotics in Postoperative Pain Management

“…At the same time, there are quite a lot of clinical studies referring to the reduction in postoperative bloating and the shortening of the time duration up to the first flatus, all indirectly indicating the shortening of the postoperative paralytic ileus [118][119][120]. Both the above [115][116][117][118][119][120] may not have a direct, suppressive effect on the pain originating from abdominal wall trauma, or from the distension of the gut wall, but there are many studies documenting the specific cytokine and other molecular changes which point in that direction.…”

“…According to the current definition, "probiotics are live microorganisms that, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health effect on the host" [114]. Today, many in vitro and in vivo studies have shown that probiotics exert potential suppressive effects on various infectious and inflammatory conditions, thus significantly shortening the inflammatory phase of the wound healing process [115][116][117]. At the same time, there are quite a lot of clinical studies referring to the reduction in postoperative bloating and the shortening of the time duration up to the first flatus, all indirectly indicating the shortening of the postoperative paralytic ileus [118][119][120].…”

Probiotics in Wound Healing

“…The development of wound dressing technology has yielded promising findings due to its capacity to provide barriers and to promote healing through immune modulation and tissue regeneration of several (non-)infected wounds [ 75 ].…”