Campus Units

Animal Science, Food Science and Human Nutrition, Genetics, Development and Cell Biology, Kinesiology, Microbiology, Neuroscience

Document Type

Article

Publication Version

Accepted Manuscript

Publication Date

2009

Journal or Book Title

Phytomedicine

Volume

16

Issue

6-7

First Page

669

Last Page

678

DOI

10.1016/j.phymed.2009.02.010

Abstract

Healing of open skin wounds begins with an inflammatory response. Restraint stress has been well documented to delay wound closure, partially via glucocorticoid (GC)-mediated immunosuppression of inflammation. Echinacea, a popular herbal immunomodulator, is purported to be beneficial for wound healing. To test the hypothesis, an alcohol extract of E. pallida was administrated orally to mice for 3 days prior to, and 4 days post wounding with a dermal biopsy on the dorsum. Concominantly, mice were exposed to 3 cycles of daily restraint stress prior to, and 4 cycles post wounding. Echinacea accelerated wound closure in the stressed mice, but had no apparent wound healing effect for the non-stressed mice when compared to their respective controls. To test if the positive healing effect is through modulation of GC release, plasma corticosterone concentrations were measured in unwounded mice treated with restraint stress and the herbal extract for 4 days. Plasma GC in restraint stressed mice gavaged with Echinacea was not different from mice treated with restraint only, but was increased compared to the vehicle control. This data suggests that the improved wound healing effect of Echinacea in stressed mice is not mediated through modulation of GC signaling.

Comments

This is a manuscript of an article from Phytomedicine 16 (2009): 669, doi: 10.1016/j.phymed.2009.02.010. Posted with permission.

Rights

© 2009. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright Owner

Elsevier GmbH

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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