New research can now help the clinicians to predict which wounds like bedsores are likely to turn chronic.
Bed sores, also known as pressure sores or pressure ulcers, affect people mostly when they are lying on their beds in the hospital or at home without much movements. Bedsores arise from poor circulation problems and people with diabetes, who are mostly bedridden. About 5-10% of the total patients in the institutionalized health care had suffered from bedsores some time or the other.Researchers from NYU School of Medicine have discovered that skin cells can get stuck in the middle of the process of healing and may not reach the site of the wound. A molecule called c-myc causes this sudden stop of the healing process, causing the skin to thicken, get in the way of the cells that can repair the wound from reaching the site of the wound. Researchers had successfully traced the overproduction of the molecules called c-myc to beta-catenin behavior of the cells. Researchers feel that the identification of the beta-catenin function leading to bedsores can be used in the predictive fashion to predict which of the wounds will turn chronic.
Reference: American Journal of Pathology, July 2005
