Why does the rate of wound healing decrease with age?

  As we all know, the healing speed of wounds is related to age, but the healing speed of young or young adults is faster, otherwise the healing speed is slow. why is it like this? "Cell" published an experiment at Rockefeller University to study the molecular changes in the skin of aging mice and describe the process of wound healing in the human body. Elaine Fuchs, a professor of cell biology at Rockefeller University and a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, pointed out that injuries within a few days can cause skin cells to migrate and close the wound. This process requires coordination of nearby immune cells. Their experiments show that the communication between skin cells and immune cells is gradually hindered with age. This discovery may lead to the development of new methods to accelerate the treatment of the elderly.

  Returned skin cells

  Fuchs went on to explain that whenever a wound develops, the human body needs to quickly repair the protective function of the skin barrier, and wound healing is the most complicated thing in the human body. This is one of the processes. The article’s co-authors Keyes and Liu Siqi added that many types of cells, analytical pathways, and signaling systems can take seconds to months to respond.

  The change. In the skin healing process of the sore, both skin cells and immune cells play a role, and when the keratinocytes become the abbreviation of the wound, new skin cells will grow. According to reports

  The

  team focused on studying mice between 2 and 24 months old, which corresponded to humans between 20 and 70 years old. The results showed that wound healing was slow due to the slow migration of keratinocytes in aged mice.

  So why do old mouse keratinocytes move slowly? Facts have proved that wound healing requires the presence of specific immune cells in the skin. As shown in the figure above, after injury, the keratinocytes on the edge of the injury will produce a protein called "skin" that fills the gap and wakes up nearby immune cells (including dendritic epithelial T cells DETC) . I will. In mice, keratinocytes cannot exert their ability to wake up immune cells.

  trying to reverse

  In order to see if the elderly can improve their ability to produce "skin" proteins, researchers turned to study "skin" proteins. When the protein of the small mouse and the skin tissue of the large mouse were put into the small wooden house, it was found that it promoted the migration of keratinocytes. Therefore, scientists hope to use this principle to accelerate wound healing in the elderly. Development of immune cell-based products and drug activation pathways.