A team of researchers from North Carolina State University has created a lightweight and inexpensive bandage that uses an electric field to encourage healing in chronic wounds like diabetic foot ulcers that heal slowly, if at all.
To accomplish this, the team created water-powered, electronics-free dressings (WPEDs) that are disposable wound dressings featuring electrodes on one side and a small, biocompatible battery composed of a magnesium anode and a silver/silver chloride cathode with a dry cellulose separator impregnated with sodium chloride on the other side.
Source: Rajaram KavetiSource: Rajaram Kaveti

Once the bandage is applied to a subject so that the electrodes are in contact with the wound, a drop of water is applied to the biocompatible battery, thereby activating it. Once activated, the bandage creates an electric field.

The team explained that patients will not feel any sensation from the dressing, which weighs 290 mg. Further, the dressing reportedly provides hours of electrotherapy with a voltage of roughly 1.5 V.

“The duration of stimulation and power output offered by the dressing depends on the impedance of the wound which changes as the wound heals,” explained the researchers. “The impedance gradually increases from 10 to 60kΩ from the day of injury to full recovery.”

When tested on diabetic mice, the wounds treated with the electric bandages healed 30% faster than wounds treated with traditional bandages, the team explained.

The team’s findings are detailed in the article, “Water-powered, electronics-free dressings that electrically stimulate wounds for rapid wound closure,” which appears in the journal Science Advances.

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