Hair Cycle Modulation To Promote Human Wound Healing

Wounds Clinical Trial

Official title: Hair Cycle Modulation To Promote Human Wound Healing

Status Suspended

Clinical Trial Summary

Chronic wounds represent a huge burden to both patients and the National Health Service (NHS), with over 200,000 sufferers in the UK alone. Based on current conservative estimates the NHS spends £2.3 - £3.1 billion pounds every year treating these patients.

This study aims to reduce this shared burden, preliminary data from our research group using animal models has demonstrated variable ability of hair follicles to heal wounds based upon their stage within their growth cycle. This currently proposed study therefore aims to perform a simple novel intervention on patients prior to their elective surgery in an effort to replicate the substantial healing abilities noted in the animal models.

Under normal circumstances, a patient's operative site is shaved prior to the surgery for hygiene and visual simplicity. The aim of this study is to wax 50% of the patient's operative site prior to their surgery, the other half will be shaved on the day of surgery as per normal surgical protocol. Based on known data this waxing technique will cycle the hair follicles into their growth phase at the time of surgery. The growth phase of hair follicles corresponds with an increased ability to heal due to recruitment of a patients own stem cells. This study therefore aims to take advantage of the patient's own stem cell population. The 50% waxing and 50% shaving method upon each patients donor site allows us to directly compare the influence of these two methods directly on a patient-by-patient basis.

Clinical Trial Description

n/a

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Wounds
• Wounds and Injuries

• NCT number: NCT04753060
• Study type: Interventional
• Source: University of Hull
• Status: Suspended
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: July 26, 2019
• Completion date: December 31, 2021