Impacts of bone marrow aspirate and peripheral blood derived platelet-rich plasma on the wound healing in chronic ischaemic limb

Abstract

Platelet rich plasma (PRP) has attracted attention as a safe and cost-effective source of growth factors that stimulate cells to regenerate tissue. Bone marrow cells are also estimated as an effective material for treating chronic ulcers. With the same technique to concentrate PRP from peripheral blood, bone marrow aspirate was processed and marrow cells were concentrated as well as platelets. Impact of PRP derived from bone marrow aspirate (bm-PRP) and that from peripheral blood (pb-PRP) on wound healing of persistent ischaemic rabbits' limbs were observed. Full thickness skin defects were made on the thighs, which had been treated to be persistent ischaemic status 3 weeks previously. Saline, pb-PRP, and bm-PRP were injected into the wound floor, respectively. Skin defected areas on ischaemic limbs were significantly wider than those on non-ischaemic limbs. bm-PRP injected wounds showed a significantly smaller skin defect area compared with pb-PRP and ischaemic-saline wounds at all time points. Fluorescently dyed cells of bm-PRP, injected into the wounds, could be traced 4 weeks after, whereas those of pb-PRP could be traced no more than 2 weeks. Wound healing on an ischaemic limb was accelerated with bm-PRP, whereas pb-PRP could not show any significance from saline. This difference can be attributed to the kind of cells contained in the PRPs. Injection of bm-PRP is a good candidate for treating wounds on ischaemic limbs.

Key Words::

• Platelet-rich plasma
• bone marrow
• wound healing
• chronic ischaemia
• ischaemic limb
• skin ulcer

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (No. 19592083) and seed grant of Hyogo College of Medicine. This paper was partly presented at the 37th annual meeting of The Japanese Society for Wound Healing (Tokyo, 2007) and at the 16th annual meeting of the Japan Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Research Council (Kobe, 2007).