Posted on 01/08/2023 7:03:17 PM PST by ConservativeMind
In a study, skin scars began to behave more like uninjured skin after they were treated with hair follicle transplants. The scarred skin harbored new cells and blood vessels, remodeled collagen to restore healthy patterns, and even expressed genes found in healthy unscarred skin.
Scar tissue in the skin lacks hair, sweat glands, blood vessels and nerves, which are vital for regulating body temperature and detecting pain and other sensations. Scarring can also impair movement as well as potentially cause discomfort and emotional distress.
Hairy skin heals faster and scars less than non-hairy skin—and hair transplants had previously been shown to aid wound healing. Inspired by this, the researchers hypothesized that transplanting growing hair follicles into scar tissue might cause scars to remodel themselves.
Researchers transplanted hair follicles into mature scars on scalps of three participants.
They took and microscope-imaged 3 mm-thick biopsies of the scars just before transplantation, and then again at two, four, and six months afterwards.
The researchers found that the follicles inspired profound architectural and genetic shifts in the scars towards a profile of healthy, uninjured skin.
After transplantation, the follicles continued to produce hair and induced restoration across skin layers.
At six months post-transplant, the epidermis had doubled in thickness alongside increased cell growth, bringing it to around the same thickness as uninjured skin.
The next skin layer down, the dermis, is populated with connective tissue, blood vessels, sweat glands, nerves, and hair follicles. Scar maturation leaves the dermis with fewer cells and blood vessels, but after transplantation the number of cells had doubled at six months, and the number of vessels had reached nearly healthy-skin levels by four months.
Scarring also increases the density of collagen fibers. The hair transplants reduced the density of the fibers, reducing stiffness.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
I thought this was going to be a story about Plugs (biden) as Rush used to call him.
Very cool. The follicles on the back of your head can also be used to regenerate the ones on top of your head.
Who’d a thunk it?
Sorry, Slow Joe. New plugs won’t heal the scars in your brain.
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