Revista de Medicina Regenerativa

Why do we know so much about wound healing and yet so little about Keloids?

Ernst Reichenberger

Why do we know so much about wound healing– and yet so little about Keloids?

Wound healing after an injury or a bruise is something our skin deals with everyday by wound closure and subsequent scar formation. After some time a scar may even disappear or flatten out. What appears to be a simple reaction of the body to a dermal assault is a complex series of orchestrated events that involves changes in the extracellular matrix environment of the skin, skin cell migration and immune response. The quality of wound healing depends on many factors such as health status, age, environmental factors (e.g., medications, nutrition and life style) and differences in gene regulation to control the succession of wound healing events. There are a number of inherited connective tissue disorders that affect wound healing such as Marfan syndrome, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, epidermolysis bullosa  or acute or chronic diseases such as diabetes. Patients with reduced immune response or chronic inflammatory disorders can also have delayed wound healing.