Tilapia skin bandages can help heal wounds — study

Tilapia isn’t anything special here in the Philippines. It’s a pretty common fish that you can find anywhere. But science may have found something pretty unique about tilapia — collagen from its skin can help heal wounds.

 

According to a study published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, the wounds of wounded mice healed faster when dressing with tilapia collagen was applied, compared to results from a different dressing.

 

Collagen is the main component of connective tissue, and it has long been known that it can help wound healing. Most, if not all, studies have focused on mammalian sources of collagen, but diseases can be transmitted from source animals, usually pigs and cows, to humans. Fish collagen is arguably safer because fish are affected by very different infectious agents.

 

The team, made up of Chinese researchers at the Shanghai Jiaotong University of Medicine and led by Jiao Sun, extracted collagen from tilapia and used it to create a sponge. They then spun the sponge into nanofibres that had all the right properties that made it suitable for dressings; they had high tensile strength, were hydrophilic, and thermally stable. They could withstand skin stretching as a person moves around and wouldn’t lose its form at body temperature.

 

The collagen also didn’t elicit any negative reactions from the mice’s immune systems and the ready availability of the raw material needed — tilapia skin — means that it won’t be as expensive as other wound treatment options.

 

According to team member Xiumei Mo, while commercialization of this discovery is possible, further tests on larger animals are still needed. The team is currently looking into the possibility of these additional tests and into modifying the tilapia collagen nanofibers to give them antimicrobial properties. —JST, GMA News