Longitudinal study of human skin wounds
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Longitudinal study of human skin wounds
IRAS ID
170144
Contact name
K G Harding CBE
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 8 months, 1 days
Research summary
Human skin wounds do not heal easily in some patients. Although there have been improvements in wound therapy in recent decades, there are still many patients with wounds that do not heal over months or even years, causing considerable health care costs and a loss of quality of life. To prepare the path for a new generation of therapeutic approaches that provide considerable improvements in patient outcomes, a comprehensive understanding of the patient population is needed.
In the UK around 15% of people with diabetes will develop a DFU and about 5% of these do not heal. VLUs have an estimated prevalence of 0.1% to 0.3% and, once diagnosed often patients begin a continuous cycle of healing and tissue breakdown over many years often leading to a decreased quality in their day to day living. Both of these types of wounds are chronic wounds.
We know there are substances called biomarkers in blood, other body fluids and tissue. One of the goals of the study is to identify whether any of these biomarkers are specific to chronic wounds. It is hoped that any chronic wound biomarkers identified can be measured and that they will help our understanding of why certain wounds do not heal, and provide a guide to the use of appropriate therapy.
Phase I of the study will focus on identifying the most sensitive technical workflow from sample collection to data analysis to enable a high degree of sample comparability to enable us to sensitively detect links between molecular and clinical events in Phase 2.
The whole study will involve up to 160 donors and will probably take 2-3 years to complete.
REC name
Wales REC 2
REC reference
15/WA/0182
Date of REC Opinion
21 Jul 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion