Abstract
Diabetic foot ulcer is a major complication of diabetes mellitus. It occurred in about 15% of all diabetic patients. To date, the outcome of management of diabetic foot ulcer is poor and low sufficient. Some new therapies were suggested to manage and treat this disease. In almost therapies, management of diabetic foot ulcer relates to debridement of the wound, revascularization, off-loading of the ulcer, antibacterial actions, stimulating granulation, epidermization and angiogenesis. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of activated platelet rich plasma (aPRP) on diabetic foot ulcer healing on volunteer patients. There were 6 patients enrolled in this study. All patients have non-healing foot ulcers. aPRP was isolated from peripheral blood and activated with calcium chloride. Patients were injected with aPRP two times with 14-day interval. All patients were monitored during 12 weeks. The results showed that 100% (6/6) ulcers completely closed after about 7 weeks. This result initially suggests that aPRP injection is efficient method to treat the non-healing foot ulcers. Level of evidence: IV
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
Introduction
Diabetic foot ulcer is a major complication of diabetes mellitus, and is the major component of the diabetic foot. This medical condition affects to 15% of all patients with diabetes mellitus. Recent study showed that up to 88% of all lower leg amputation related to diabetic foot ulcer (Alvarsson et al., 2012). More importantly the cases of diabetic mellitus patients rapidly increase to 439 million by 2030.
Diabetic neuropathy and peripheral vascular disease are 2 major factors causing diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) (Wu et al., 2007). The most difficulty of DFUs is non-healing for a long time. The main reason is related to loss of balance between metalloproteinases (MMPs) and MMP inhibitors (Muller et al., 2008). This status is enhanced to become serious when combining with ischemia and vascular disease. The vascular injury and ischemia reduced the oxygen and nutrients to wound. So the wound healing mechanism cannot perform as in the non-diabetic patients. Lack of oxygen and nutrients, epithelial cells at wound can not express essential factors for healing such as VEGF and PDGF; almost of cells at wound changed metabolism and activity (Lobo et al., 2013). These changes in structure and functions of cells and some factors at DFUs delayed the healing process and broke the normal healing process. Hence, when diabetic mellitus patients got DFUs, almost DFUs cannot be healed, and finally patients must be faced with lower leg amputation. In fact, DFU treatment also remains as a challenge.
At the present, DFUs were treated with some physical therapies such as vacuum-assisted closure (Lone et al., 2014; Nather et al., 2010; Ravari et al., 2013), high-voltage pulsed current electrical stimulation (Houghton et al., 2003; Polak et al., 2014), hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) (Kranke et al., 2012; Stoekenbroek et al., 2014), negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) (Zhang et al., 2014)… Some biological therapies also used in DFU treatment. Some growth factors such as EGF (Singla et al., 2012; Tsang et al., 2003; Tuyet et al., 2009), GCSF (Cruciani et al., 2013), NGF (Tiaka et al., 2011), VEGF (Rico et al., 2009)… were evaluated in DFUs. Although these biological therapies improved the time of wound closure, these therapies had not significantly recovered wound healing. In the recent studies, scientists used a pool of growth factors from PRP (Martinez-Zapata et al., 2012; Saad Setta et al., 2011; Villela and Santos, 2010), others used stem cells alone (Blumberg et al., 2012; Kirana et al., 2012; Yang et al., 2013) or in combined with PRP (Cervelli et al., 2009). PRP and stem cells, especially mesenchymal stem cells, could quickly heal the wounds compared to conventional therapies.
This study aimed to apply of autologous PRP in diabetic mellitus patient type 2 DFU treatment. Different to previous publication about PRP usage, in this study, diabetic mellitus patients would be injected with both PRP and PPP to improve the efficacy.
Materials – Methods
Diabetic mellitus patients
Diabetic mellitus patients type 2 have DFUs with grade I or more. These DFUs cannot heal at least 4 weeks. There were 6 patients enrolled in this study without control. All patients agreed the consent form before enrolling the study. This study approved by Ethical and Medical Committee of Van Hanh Hospital, HCM, VN. The grade of wound is recorded according to the University of Texas (grade and stage) wound classification systems (Oyibo et al., 2001).
Physical examination and treatment
All patients would be done physical examination, Doppler ultrasound scan of the leg with DFUs, X-ray of the foot. Then, patients were classified to grades according to Classification of Texas University. The size of DFUs also recorded before treatment. Only patients satisfied with criteria would be collected 20 mL of peripheral blood to make PRP.
PRP preparation
20 mL of peripheral blood was used to prepare PRP and PPP according to the guideline of New-PRP Pro Kit (Geneworld Ltd., HCM, VN). Briefly, blood was centrifuged at 1.500 rpm in 5 min to obtain plasma. Then, this plasma was centrifuged at 3.500 rpm in 5 min to collect platelets as a pellet at the bottom of the centrifuge tube. Pellet was diluted in 3 mL plasma and was considered as PRP, and remaining plasma was considered as PPP. Both PRP and PPP were activated to release growth factor by Calcium chloride. When calcium chloride was added into PRP, fibrin gel was formed, and this gel was used to dress on the wound, and activated PPP was stored in -200C for using in the next days.
PRP and PPP application on DFUs
DFUs were dressed by fibrin gel in the first day. After 3 days, from day 4-8, DFUs were injected with activated PPP at the wound bed. During the treatment, diabetic mellitus patients still used antibiotics, NSAID, and vitamin. If after 2 weeks, the wound had not signs of healing, patients continued to be repeated this procedure. DFUs were examined in 12 weeks 2 weeks/time.
Results
The medical conditions of patients enrolled in this study
There were 6 patients with 3 males and 3 females enrolling in this study with average ages 63 with more than 5 years of diabetes mellitus. All patients must use drugs to reduce the glucose, included insulin injection, and get hypertension (4/6) and hypertension combined kidney failure (2/6). By ultrasound and X-ray, all patients received lower leg ischemia from 70-90% (artery). All patients got DFUs more than 5 weeks duration from II-III grade without granulation tissue at treatment of enrolling. The grade of wound is recorded according to the University of Texas (grade and stage) wound classification systems (Oyibo et al., 2001).
Treatment efficacy
Results showed that 100% (6/6) patients completely closed the DFUs, included 2 cases with whole toes after 12 weeks. The average time for completed healing was 7.1 weeks. The soonest time was 4 weeks. All patients developed granulation tissue after 2 weeks. And wound areas significantly decreased at week 2 after one time of PRP and PPP treatment. This is the safe method to treat DFUs. During 12 weeks, there was not any adverse effect recorded in all patients (Fig. 1).
Discussion
DFUs are results of healing process failure in diabetic mellitus patients. The lack as well as malfunction of some growth factors broke the natural healing process. PRP and PPP provided almost of growth factor for healing. In fact, all patients went to completely heal the DFUs. PRP is plasma enriched with platelets. When activated with calcium, fibrin will be formed, and platelets released growth factors. In this case, PRP exhibited two important roles for wound healing. Firstly, gel fibrin formed a barrier to prevent the bacteria contamination into the wound bed. Secondly, the growth factors from platelets triggered wound healing and balanced the wound if treated with PRP (Margolis et al., 2001).
Different with our procedure, almost previous published procedure, only PRP was applied on the wound, we used both activated PRP and PPP in wound treatment. Although this study was limited with 6 patients, we also recognized that injection of activated PPP after 3 days of PRP fibrin dressing gave useful benefits to wound healing process. PPP contains very low number of platelets, but it contains a balanced pool of nutrients for cells. DFUs always combined with ischemia that significantly decreases blood flow to DFUs. All epithelial cells and support cells were starved. While PRP provides growth factors for neo-angiogenesis and cell migrations to heal the wound, PPP injection every day will provide nutrients for cells at DFUs. In fact, Saad et al. compared efficacy of PRP and PPP on wound healing in DFUs and showed that healing in PRP group was significantly faster (P<0.005) than PPP. However, PPP also well stimulated the wound healing in DFUs (Saad Setta et al., 2011).
Treatment with PRP also showed that was more efficient than others. In a recent study, Lone et al. (2014) used vacuum- assisted closure method to treat DFUs. They showed that 92.85% patients developing granulation tissue by the end of 2 weeks; and 77.78% patients reached 100% granulation at the end of week 5 (Lone et al., 2014).
Conclusion
DFUs seriously effected to life quality of diabetic mellitus patients. Although there are some breakthroughs in the diabetic mellitus foot care to reduce the DFUs, diabetic mellitus patients faced with amputation. In this study, in the limitation of patients, the results showed that application of PRP and PPP efficiently to heal DFUs. The results showed that there was not any adverse effect recorded in all patients during 12 weeks. These results provided a promising method for DFU treatment.
Acknowledgment
This work was funded by grants from GeneWorld Ltd. SHTP, HCM, VN.
Abbreviations
bFGF: basic fibroblast growth factor; DFU: Diabetic foot ulcer; EGF: epidermal growth factor; MMPs: Metalloproteinases; MSCs: Mesenchymal stem cells; PPP: Platelet rich plasma; PRP: Platelet rich plasma; SVF: Stromal vascular fraction; VEGF: Vascular endothelial growth factor
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors' contributions
All authors read and approved the final manuscript. TDXT, PTBL collected peripheral blood, and applied PRP and PPP on patients. PVP prepared PRP, and PPP using New-PRP Pro kit, prepared the manuscript in cooperation with all other authors.
References
Alvarsson, A., Sandgren, B., Wendel, C., Alvarsson, M., and Brismar, K. (2012). A retrospective analysis of amputation rates in diabetic patients: can lower extremity amputations be further prevented? Cardiovascular diabetology 11, 18.
Blumberg, S.N., Berger, A., Hwang, L., Pastar, I., Warren, S.M., and Chen, W. (2012). The role of stem cells in the treatment of diabetic foot ulcers. Diabetes research and clinical practice 96, 1–9.
Cervelli, V., Gentile, P., Scioli, M.G., Grimaldi, M., Casciani, C.U., Spagnoli, L.G., and Orlandi, A. (2009). Application of platelet-rich plasma in plastic surgery: clinical and in vitro evaluation. Tissue engineering Part C, Methods 15, 625–634.
Cho, J.W., Kim, S.A., and Lee, K.S. (2012). Platelet-rich plasma induces increased expression of G1 cell cycle regulators, type I collagen, and matrix metalloproteinase-1 in human skin fibroblasts. International journal of molecular medicine 29, 32–36.
Cruciani, M., Lipsky, B.A., Mengoli, C., and de Lalla, F. (2013). Granulocyte-colony stimulating factors as adjunctive therapy for diabetic foot infections. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews 8, CD006810.
Houghton, P.E., Kincaid, C.B., Lovell, M., Campbell, K.E., Keast, D.H., Woodbury, M.G., and Harris, K.A. (2003). Effect of electrical stimulation on chronic leg ulcer size and appearance. Physical therapy 83, 17–28.
Kim, D.H., Je, Y.J., Kim, C.D., Lee, Y.H., Seo, Y.J., Lee, J.H., and Lee, Y. (2011). Can Platelet-rich Plasma Be Used for Skin Rejuvenation? Evaluation of Effects of Platelet-rich Plasma on Human Dermal Fibroblast. Annals of dermatology 23, 424–431.
Kirana, S., Stratmann, B., Prante, C., Prohaska, W., Koerperich, H., Lammers, D., Gastens, M.H., Quast, T., Negrean, M., Stirban, O.A., et al.(2012). Autologous stem cell therapy in the treatment of limb ischaemia induced chronic tissue ulcers of diabetic foot patients. International journal of clinical practice 66, 384–393.
Kranke, P., Bennett, M.H., Martyn-St James, M., Schnabel, A., and Debus, S.E. (2012). Hyperbaric oxygen therapy for chronic wounds. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews 4, CD004123.
Lobo, R., Kiernan, T.J., and Jaff, M.R. (2013). Medical therapy for critical limb ischemia and the diabetic foot: an update. The Journal of cardiovascular surgery 54, 671–678.
Lone, A.M., Zaroo, M.I., Laway, B.A., Pala, N.A., Bashir, S.A., and Rasool, A. (2014). Vacuum-assisted closure versus conventional dressings in the management of diabetic foot ulcers: a prospective case-control study. Diabetic foot & ankle 5.
Margolis, D.J., Kantor, J., Santanna, J., Strom, B.L., and Berlin, J.A. (2001). Effectiveness of platelet releasate for the treatment of diabetic neuropathic foot ulcers. Diabetes care 24, 483–488.
Martinez-Zapata, M.J., Marti-Carvajal, A.J., Sola, I., Exposito, J.A., Bolibar, I., Rodriguez, L., and Garcia, J. (2012). Autologous plateletrich plasma for treating chronic wounds. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews 10, CD006899.
McAleer, J.P., Sharma, S., Kaplan, E.M., and Persich, G. (2006). Use of autologous platelet concentrate in a nonhealing lower extremity wound. Advances in skin & wound care 19, 354–363.
Muller, M., Trocme, C., Lardy, B., Morel, F., Halimi, S., and Benhamou, P.Y. (2008). Matrix metalloproteinases and diabetic foot ulcers: the ratio of MMP-1 to TIMP-1 is a predictor of wound healing. Diabetic medicine : a journal of the British Diabetic Association 25, 419–426.
Nather, A., Chionh, S.B., Han, A.Y., Chan, P.P., and Nambiar, A. (2010). Effectiveness of vacuum-assisted closure (VAC) therapy in the healing of chronic diabetic foot ulcers. Annals of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore 39, 353–358.
Oyibo, S.O., Jude, E.B., Tarawneh, I., Nguyen, H.C., Harkless, L.B., and Boulton, A.J. (2001). A comparison of two diabetic foot ulcer classification systems: the Wagner and the University of Texas wound classification systems. Diabetes care 24, 84–88.
Pham, P.V., Vu, N.B., Pham, V.M., Truong, N.H., Pham, T.L., Dang, L.T., Nguyen, T.T., Bui, A.N., and Phan, N.K. (2014). Good manufacturing practice-compliant isolation and culture of human umbilical cord blood-derived mesenchymal stem cells. Journal of translational medicine 12, 56.
Polak, A., Franek, A., and Taradaj, J. (2014). High-Voltage Pulsed Current Electrical Stimulation in Wound Treatment. Advances in wound care 3, 104–117.
Ravari, H., Modaghegh, M.H., Kazemzadeh, G.H., Johari, H.G., Vatanchi, A.M., Sangaki, A., and Shahrodi, M.V. (2013). Comparision of vacuum-asisted closure and moist wound dressing in the treatment of diabetic foot ulcers. Journal of cutaneous and aesthetic surgery 6, 17–20.
Rico, T., Green, J., and Kirsner, R.S. (2009). Vascular endothelial growth factor delivery via gene therapy for diabetic wounds: first steps. The Journal of investigative dermatology 129, 2084.
Saad Setta, H., Elshahat, A., Elsherbiny, K., Massoud, K., and Safe, I. (2011). Platelet-rich plasma versus platelet-poor plasma in the management of chronic diabetic foot ulcers: a comparative study. International wound journal 8, 307–312.
Singla, S., Singla, S., Kumar, A., and Singla, M. (2012). Role of epidermal growth factor in healing of diabetic foot ulcers. The Indian journal of surgery 74, 451–455.
Stoekenbroek, R.M., Santema, T.B., Legemate, D.A., Ubbink, D.T., van den Brink, A., and Koelemay, M.J. (2014). Hyperbaric Oxygen for the Treatment of Diabetic Foot Ulcers: A Systematic Review. European journal of vascular and endovascular surgery : the official journal of the European Society for Vascular Surgery.
Tiaka, E.K., Papanas, N., Manolakis, A.C., and Maltezos, E. (2011). The role of nerve growth factor in the prophylaxis and treatment of diabetic foot ulcers. International journal of burns and trauma 1, 68–76.
Tsang, M.W., Wong, W.K., Hung, C.S., Lai, K.M., Tang, W., Cheung, E.Y., Kam, G., Leung, L., Chan, C.W., Chu, C.M., et al.(2003). Human epidermal growth factor enhances healing of diabetic foot ulcers. Diabetes care 26, 1856–1861.
Tuyet, H.L., Nguyen Quynh, T.T., Vo Hoang Minh, H., Thi Bich, D.N., Do Dinh, T., Le Tan, D., Van, H.L., Le Huy, T., Doan Huu, H., and Tran Trong, T.N. (2009). The efficacy and safety of epidermal growth factor in treatment of diabetic foot ulcers: the preliminary results. International wound journal 6, 159–166.
Van Pham, P., Bui, K.H., Ngo, D.Q., Vu, N.B., Truong, N.H., Phan, N.L., Le, D.M., Duong, T.D., Nguyen, T.D., Le, V.T., et al.(2013). Activated platelet-rich plasma improves adipose-derived stem cell transplantation efficiency in injured articular cartilage. Stem cell research & therapy 4, 91.
Villela, D.L., and Santos, V.L. (2010). Evidence on the use of plateletrich plasma for diabetic ulcer: a systematic review. Growth factors (Chur, Switzerland) 28, 111–116.
Wu, S.C., Driver, V.R., Wrobel, J.S., and Armstrong, D.G. (2007). Foot ulcers in the diabetic patient, prevention and treatment. Vascular health and risk management 3, 65–76.
Yang, M., Sheng, L., Zhang, T.R., and Li, Q. (2013). Stem cell therapy for lower extremity diabetic ulcers: where do we stand? BioMed research international 2013, 462179.
Zhang, J., Hu, Z.C., Chen, D., Guo, D., Zhu, J.Y., and Tang, B. (2014). Effectiveness and safety of negative pressure wound therapy for diabetic foot ulcers: a meta-analysis. Plastic and reconstructive surgery.
Cite this article as:
Tran, T., Le, P., & Pham, P. (2014). Diabetic foot ulcer treatment by activated platelet rich plasma: a clinical study. Biomedical Research And Therapy, 1(2):37–42.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Open access
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0) which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Tran, TX., Le, PB. & Van Pham, P. Diabetic foot ulcer treatment by activated platelet rich plasma: a clinical study. Biomed Res Ther 1, 8 (2014). https://doi.org/10.7603/s40730-014-0008-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7603/s40730-014-0008-3