New electrical stitches use muscle movement to speed up healing

In rats, the sutures hastened recovery and reduced the risk of infection.

Oct 8, 2024 - 22:30

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New electrical stitches use muscle movement to speed up healing

Because the body moves, the thread generates electricity by way of friction

A surgeon holds a suture in their hands, while any other cuts the suture with scissors.

One day, doctors would possibly stitch up wounds with a thread that generates electricity using the body’s own movement. A small amount of electricity may also help cells speed up the healing process.

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Stitches are getting a lovely upgrade.

In an experiment in rats, a brand new strong, flexible thread hastened wound healing by transforming muscle movement into electricity, researchers report October eight in Nature Communications.

If the subject matter is in the tip deemed safe for use in people, it “may per chance change how we treat injuries,” says materials scientist Chengyi Hou of Donghua University in Shanghai.

Researchers already knew that pumping electricity through stitches may per chance speed healing, but previous technologies relied on bulky external batteries. The brand new sutures are powered by the body itself (SN: three/2/23).

The thread is made of biodegradable polymers and magnesium, a metal which may perhaps per chance be absorbed by the body over time. When muscles around the sutures contract and calm down, the thread’s middle layer rubs against the outer shell, transferring electrons to the shell and generating electricity.

Hou and colleagues applied the thread’s electrical stimulation to synthetic wounds in lab dishes. After 24 hours, fibroblasts — cells which are important to healing — decreased the wound area from sixty 9 % to 11 %. Comparatively, untreated synthetic wounds decreased in size from sixty 9 % to 33 % after 24 hours.

In an experiment in rats, rodents treated with the electrical sutures made a quicker recovery and were less likely to develop an infection than rats treated with traditional sutures and untreated rats.

Hou’s team next plans to establish the sutures in larger animals.