How many times did you fall on rollerskis this year and scraped your knees real bad? And how many days did it take for those wounds, scrapes and lacerations to heal?
Rollerskiers (and bikers, inline skaters and other brothers & sisters in pain in lower extremities) rejoice!
Because researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, working jointly with Harvard Medical School and MIT, have come up a smart bandage that is meant speed up wound healing by the factor of three! At least that’s what was achieved with wounded lab mice – their skin tissue regrew three times faster.
The bandage itself is very XXI century – it consists of “electrically conductive fibers coated in a gel that can be individually loaded with infection-fighting antibiotics, tissue-regenerating growth factors, painkillers or other medications” .
It has a postage stamp-sized micro-controller that could be wirelessly triggered by a smartphone or other device and, once activated, sends small amounts of voltage that heats the bandage to pre-programmed temperature, thus activating meds it contains.
We don’t need to be upset by the fact that the last thing on researchers’ mind was well-being of rollerskiers – “the smart bandage” is primarily for battlefield wounds and emergencies of all kinds. But if our annoying scraps could go away faster – sign me in, I’d take two!
Photo courtesy of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
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