Papers of the Week

Many wounds can be challenging to manage because of pain and poor angiogenesis. An ideal treatment for such wounds would be a gel that can induce angiogenesis to accelerate wound healing and to reduce pain. Our aim in this study was to explore combining 2-deoxy-d-ribose (2dDR) to induce angiogenesis with lidocaine hydrochloride to reduce pain in the form of a tube-based gel. Gels were synthesized with a fixed concentration of 2dDR as established in prior studies and we explored several concentrations of lidocaine hydrochloride. Simultaneous release of 2dDR and lidocaine was then assessed from all gels. A gel with 9.9 % w/w lidocaine gel showed good release and was selected for further studies. The gel was sterilized by heating at 90 °C for 20 min and post-sterilization drug release analysis was performed to confirm that sterilization did not affect this. The performance of the gel was then assessed in a full-thickness rat wound model to assess pain relief and wound healing potential. Results showed that the treatment of animals with this gel reduced the pain from a pain score of 2 to 0 after 2 h of application as compared to 2 to 1.5 in the control group. The gel also showed an 86 % wound closure as compared to the control group which achieved 58 % wound closure in 14 days. We suggest that this hydrogel is a potential therapeutic solution to induce angiogenesis for accelerating wound healing and to reduce pain. This could have applications in a range of wounds from superficial grazes through to bed sores.