Residual Hair Biomaterial Particulates Improve Dermal Regeneration and Combined with Electrical Stimulation Accelerates Skin Wound Closure
Discuss this preprint
Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?Listed in
This article is not in any list yet, why not save it to one of your lists.Abstract
Objective
To evaluate the effect of residual hair (RH) biomaterial particulates, biphasic electrical stimulation (ES), and their combination (RHES) on the kinetics and quality of skin wound healing.
Method
Eighteen adult albino mice received bilateral, splinted 10-mm full-thickness dorsal excisional wounds and were randomly assigned to one of three animal groups producing four wound-level treatment conditions: untreated control (-) (n = 12), RH (n = 12), ES (n = 6), and combined RHES (n = 6 wounds). Daily wound images were segmented using an AI-assisted workflow: a U-Net (ResNet34 encoder, ImageNet-pretrained, trained on a parallel single-expert tracing study with held-out validation Dice = 0.906) generated initial boundary predictions, each reviewed and corrected as needed. Wound size measures (perimeter, area, equivalent diameter [D_eq], circularity, aspect ratio) were normalized to the day-0 value of each wound and analyzed by linear mixed-effects regression with mouse identity as a random intercept and mouse body weight as a covariate. On day 7, wounds were excised, fixed, processed for histology, and analyzed by Masson’s trichrome (collagen content in granulation tissue) and GAP-43 immunohistochemistry (a marker of regenerative cellular activity).
Results
All three treatments significantly accelerated wound closure compared to (-) (Day × Treatment interaction χ 2 (3) = 36.4, ***p < 0.0001). The closure-rate advantages on the log-D_eq scale were ES - 0.047/day (***p < 0.0001), RHES -0.029/day (***p = 0.0005), and RH -0.022/day (**p = 0.0015). By day 7, mean D_eq had decreased to 0.58 of the day-0 value in ES, 0.69 in RHES, 0.73 in RH, and 0.79 in (-). Tissue analyses revealed treatment-specific differences in healing quality: RH and RHES wounds contained 6.1× and 8.5× more collagen in granulation tissue than (-) (both **p = 0.002 vs (-); both **p = 0.009 vs ES), and showed approximately 16× and 27× greater mean GAP-43 expression than (-), respectively; the RHES increase remained significant after Bonferroni correction (adjusted *p = 0.042), whereas the RH increase did not (adjusted p = 0.058). ES alone did not significantly increase either collagen content or GAP-43 expression. Wound shape was more circular and more stable across days in RH-containing groups. Mouse body weight did not predict closure, whereas image-derived dryness, eschar coverage, and wound contraction were significant negative predictors of measured wound size.
Conclusion
ES, RH, and RHES each significantly improve wound closure kinetics. The improvement appears mechanistically distinct: ES principally accelerates closure rate, while RH principally enhances tissue-level regenerative markers (collagen deposition and GAP-43 expression). RHES combines both advantages.
Declaration of interest
Dr. de Guzman is the inventor on a pending patent covering residual hair biomaterial methods and use and a provisional patent on powderized version, both owned by Hofstra University, and is the founder of a company developing wound care products based on the technology. The study was conducted independently. Data are available upon reasonable request.
