Hi, I’d to have a discussion about animal wound models being very different from the chronic wounds we are dealing with everyday.
Animal wound models are actually acute wound created by surgery on a perfectly normal skin. Human chronic wounds are ulcers where the skin have been subjected to repetitive injury long before the final breakdown.
Animal wound models and human wounds are also different on systemic level. Patients always have comorbidities, and many are obese, immobile, and malnourished. Although diabetic animal models and other models that attempt to mimic human wounds are available for research, they do not match the complex comorbidities in patients with chronic wound. Therefore, we wound care practitioners should be cognizant of the fact and treat animal research findings and conclusions with a critical eye.
I think this is a good point; Unfortunately there are many instances in mouse studies for a variety of human diseases that fail to capture the environmental, genetic and lifestyle factors that make human conditions so much more complex by only capturing one snapshot of the disease.
I think that @Myles is suggesting that it’s not even the same disease. Granted all models are approximations, the question is how badly misfit is the mouse model is to chronic human wounds. @Myles how would you describe/quantify the misfit?
Zweli,
It’s apple and orange. The animal model is an acute wound and human disease is a chronic ulcer.
Wound is caused by external factors on normal skin. Ulcer is caused by internal factors (e.g., ischemia) on compromised skin.
Myles
Well said! A researcher told me it’s impossible to recreate a human ulcer-like lesion on animals.
Ah, I see! Thank you for clarifying!