Nerve cells of the skin help to heal wounds

Unexpected helpers in wound healing

Cut in the finger or scratched the knee: Everybody draws smaller and smaller wounds in the course of his life. It is often enough just to wait until everything has healed. Scientists from Switzerland have now shown how nerve cells help the skin to heal wounds.

Aids in wound healing

After minor injuries one sometimes gets the advice to try it with salt, because salt water accelerates wound healing. Others recommend treating wounds with fresh garlic. And for superficial, slightly oozing and less bleeding wounds, zinc can help to heal better. In chronic wounds, however, such home remedies usually bring nothing more. Researchers from Switzerland have now discovered how nerve cells help the skin to heal wounds. They hope that the new findings will help to treat chronic wounds effectively in the future.

A small cut or scratch: every person pulls himself in the course of his life every now and then a wound. Researchers have now discovered how nerve cells help with wound healing. (Image: leszekglasner / fotolia.com)

Skin wound must be closed quickly

A skin wound must be closed quickly. Therefore, the blood clots shortly after an injury and it forms a "Wundpfropf", reports the University of Zurich (UZH) in a statement.

In order to cure the injury permanently, however, the affected skin layers must be formed again. This requires a complex, only partially understood interplay between different cell types in our skin.

Nerve cells play a key role here, as a team led by Lukas Sommer, Professor at the Anatomical Institute of the University of Zurich, together with the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) could now show.

His research group is part of "Skintegrity", a flagship project of the University Medical Center Zurich.

Glial cells change their identity

For a long time there was evidence that for optimal healing a tissue innervates, so must be provided with nerve tracts. Why this is so, but was unclear.

With the help of an animal model, the researchers of "Skintegrity" discovered that fine nerve tracts change drastically when they are injured in a wounded skin: cells along the injured nerve pathways, called glial cells, change their original identity and are reprogrammed into "repair cells".

They lose their contact with the nerves and swarm into the wound bed. "There, they pour out a cocktail of various factors that support wound healing," explains Lukas Sommer.

With genetic experiments he was able to prove that the nerve repair cells are important, inter alia, for closing the wound, by promoting the necessary remodeling of the dermis.

The results of her research were recently published in the journal "Nature Communications".

Heal chronic wounds

In old age or, for example, in people with diabetes, it can happen that wounds heal very badly. Such chronic wounds usually cause severe discomfort and can only be treated inadequately.

The skintegrity researchers have also discovered reprogrammed nerve cells in human skin wounds.

"Now we want to better characterize the wound healing factors that are released by nerve cells together with clinicians at the University Hospital Zurich," explains Sommer.

"Maybe one day, chronic wounds could be effectively treated." (Ad)