Brazilian city uses tilapia fish skin to treat burn victims

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/brazilian-city-uses-tilapia-fish-skin-treat-burn-victims/

by curtis • 9 years ago

144 58 9 years ago

rhaps0dy2• 9 years ago

This is so cool! I learned about tilapia when looking into closed-loop hydroponics; apparently they are good at growing in tanks, growing fast, and fertilising the water.

(if you look it up in youtube though you will get tilapia harvesting videos, which are not the nicest)

markdown3• 9 years ago

closed-loop hydroponics

Aquaponics

markdown3• 9 years ago

closed-loop hydroponics

Aquaponics?

rhaps0dy2• 9 years ago

I guess; I didn't realise there was a difference in the terms.

donquichotte• 9 years ago

It's not really closed-loop though, is it? You still need to buy food to feed the fish (and maybe fish food, which will end up in your vegetables, can be contaminated, e.g. with heavy metals?)

Or am I missing something?

gbuk2013• 9 years ago

Those closed systems involve growing algae which is used to feed the fish.

fmgets• 9 years ago

*Fortaleza

dguaraglia• 9 years ago

Hah, funny, I did a double take when I read the article, but couldn't see the typo (my brain just knew something was "weird" about the word.) Thanks for solving that mystery. (For reference, I lived in Brazil for several years.)

emiliobumachar• 9 years ago

Good catch, the article typoed it. I hadn't noticed at all, and that city's name is very familiar to me. By the way of curiosity, the name means "fortress".

ChicagoBoy11• 9 years ago

I saw this news when it first broke in Brazil, and the one thing that I still haven't fully understood is just what benefit the Tilapia skin is actually offering.

When I read up on it, it seems that it goes through several different aggressive sterilization and processing stages before they are given to the patient. With all this processing, isn't the tilapia skin at that point just a gimmick?

arcticbull• 9 years ago

From the article, it appears they're after the high levels of collagen (for repair), the tensile properties (for holding the wound together) and the physical barrier (for protection). I'm guessing those are unaffected by their sterilization techniques as they are using radiation.

notgood2• 9 years ago

Sterilization just means "the process of making something free from bacteria or other living microorganisms", the only "processing" besides that is adding glycerol which is a lubricant/moisturizer, perhaps also helps to "glue" it all up. At the end it is still raw fish skin being implanted over healing wounds, it just needs to be clean as heck because healing wounds are very pron to acute infections (and the worst of them require the amputation of the limb).

Apofis• 9 years ago

The biggest benefit I see that it offers is that it doesn't need to be changed daily and can stay on for the course of the treatment. That's a huge benefit saving patients a lot of pain.

SparkyMcUnicorn• 9 years ago

Another thing is that when the bandages are replaced, it tears off bits of new skin that have started to grow.

I know a girl that had 3rd degree burns on ~85-90% of her body. The doctors said she'd die, but her family brought in some people that applied sterile honey and a certain type of leaf over her entire body, which was far more gentle than the bandages. It was one of the fastest recoveries doctors had seen.

The constant care and timely honey and leaf replacement probably played a large part to the speedy recovery, but there's a point to be made that the standard methods for treating burns seem almost backwards as it doesn't promote skin growth as much as protection from infection.

I'm not a doctor though, so maybe someone else has more input on this.

alisson3• 9 years ago

I'm using banana skins to treat wounds, its great, makes the wounds heal much better and they also offer that good protection!! I don't know the science behind it, I heard a lot of women talking about using it on the breast when breast feeding to feel better so I started to experiment with myself and I'm very happy with it too.

dmix2• 9 years ago

My mom would give me these white sugar pills when I was a kid and when I woke up saying I was sick (I had a phase where I did that often to avoid school). They'd just happen to treat my condition specifically and always made me feel better!

This is why I grew up to learn to only trust medical studies over anecdote. Even then it's good to be skeptical. Placebo can be incredibly powerful.

Any sources?

alisson3• 9 years ago

Only the banana peel is not that placebo since it offers really good protection even though if it don't have any healing property. The last time I used banana peel was when I accidentally got two toes's nails removed at once! I went to the hospital and they just made a bandage but when I got home and replaced them with banana peels, something like if my nails were the banana peels, the inside part of the peel touching my skin (or meat?) and i felt so much better than the hospital's bandage that I could even wear shoes, it was 5 months ago. I tried to search for some science I found only this: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0102-86502013000100006&... but they tested unriped and I just use the inside part of the peel of a ripe banana, I didn't find anything so specific yet, I need to dig deeper.

jen_h5• 9 years ago

Google "plantains wound healing site:nih.gov"

MichaelBurge• 9 years ago

Doesn't surprise me that sugar makes a kid feel better - they love the stuff.

kirse• 9 years ago

Placebo can be incredibly powerful.

Sounds like it works and achieved the intended effect. This is why I grew past my "I only believe what the scientists tell me to" phase and decided to selectively trust medical studies, since it's my life and my anecdote, and I'll decide what does or does not work in my anecdote.

notgood2• 9 years ago

[deleted: sorry my bad, I thought it was a sarcastic comment]

alisson3• 9 years ago

It wasn't my intention to be sarcastic, english is my second language so maybe it was that, but anyway my main source is that its a tradicional and indigenous use of banana peel (thanks for pointing out its not skin. I never tried to search for the science behind it, I found this: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0102-86502013000100006&...

amelius• 9 years ago

Does this work on burn wounds only? Or also on open wounds?

fillskills• 9 years ago

I have seen the use of boiled tea water used as antiseptic for burn victims in rural India. The results were great for the one patient I saw getting treated. Necessity is truly the mother of invention.

paganel3• 9 years ago

Honey also works pretty well if applied immediately on the skin and if the burns are not that serious to begin with. My ex-wife managed to pour burning edible oil on her hand while she was cooking some fries, but no scar remained because we applied honey on the affected skin almost immediately.

ceejayoz• 9 years ago

Having had oil burns heal without honey I'd want to see some peer-reviewed studies on its efficacy as a burn treatment first.

vacri3• 9 years ago

Burns need to be kept cool and moist. Applying anything thick and cool (within reason - lotions for example) to the burn will help. Cool the burn under cold running water if possible ('take the heat out'), then put something on it to keep it moist. Anything serious requires a trip to the ER of course.

Even if you forget to put sunscreen on and get sunburned, putting sunscreen on afterwards can help keep the skin moist and improve the outcome.

pvaldes• 9 years ago

Honey should extract water from the area. Is sugar. Could avoid blisters formation?

ptero• 9 years ago

Brewed black tea (very strong, cold, the stuff you dilute with water to get black tea you drink) was used where I grew up in Russia on eyes after mild trauma. I'm not sure if there are any formal studies on but it didn't hurt.

computator• 9 years ago

Given the substantial supply of donated human skin, tilapia skin is unlikely to arrive at American hospitals anytime soon.

I'm surprised that there's no shortage of donated skin in the USA. We're always hearing about the critical shortage of organs and appeals for blood. I wonder what makes skin different?

GavinMcG• 9 years ago

This is a complete guess. I'd imagine, though, that it's significantly harder to abuse or destroy than other organs. Internal organs can be bad candidates for transplant due to a variety of dietary, lifestyle, or health factors. Skin seems subject to fewer of those.

tomjakubowski• 9 years ago

Speculation: skin grafts can be grown basically endlessly from a donated foreskin. Circumcision is more common in the US than in Brazil. As for other organ shortages, well, if a single foreskin can produce even ~100 square meters of skin grafts, you don't need very many of them to meet a country's skin needs. And ~100 m^2 of grafts per foreskin appears to be quite the lowball: http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1999/02/17...

semi-extrinsic• 9 years ago

I'd guess also cosmetic surgery in the US produces quite a bit of human skin, although that's not expandable into skin grafts like the foreskin technique you link to.

skrause• 9 years ago

You can donate your skin that is being removed after heavy weight loss: http://www.livestrong.com/article/126643-donate-skin-after-b...

I can imaging that this is a big source of donated skin.

dzhiurgis• 9 years ago

Someone please correct me if I misunderstood, but once on Regeneratively Speaking podcast one of the researchers explained the reason why burn scars appear is that body is over-producing stem cells (same with many cancers) to fight the inflammation and they've found which compounds can actually slow it down. Was hoping this is something from the same area, but seems like a different step.

beachbum8029• 9 years ago

The Shadow over Innsmouth?

Brazilian city uses tilapia fish skin to treat burn victims

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