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The results of this research can serve as a model for new cell stimulation therapies and enable advances in the treatment of amputation lesions in humans.
A team of scientists from the American University of Tufts has managed to partially regenerate the legs of amputated frogs through progesterone treatment using a portable bioreactor attached to the wound site, according to Cell magazine Reports, published yesterday.
The results of this research can serve as a model for new cell stimulation therapies and enable advances in the treatment of amputation lesions in humans.
Some species of the animal world such as lizards or crabs are able to regenerate, but this does not occur in the case of the African nail frog, known scientifically as Xenopus laevis and examined in this study.
This type of water frog is able to regenerate its limbs in the early stages of its life, but loses this ability to adulthood.
The researchers divided the frogs into three groups to carry out their experiment. All were sewn with the portable bioreactor just in place of the wound left by the amputation.
Only frogs in one of the groups received progesterone in the bioreactor for 24 hours and the researchers observed a partial regeneration of their unobserved ends in both cases over a period of nine months. other groups.
"A very short application of the bioreactor and its payload (progesterone) resulted in months of growth and tissue structures," explained Michael Levin, one of the study's authors and biologist at the Allen Discovery Center of Tufts University in Massachusetts. (USA)
Frogs treated with progesterone had partially regenerated legs, bones, innervation and vascularization and could swim when immersed in water as if they had not been amputated.
Progesterone is a sex hormone known for its functions in the onset and development of pregnancy, but it has also been shown that it promotes the repair of nerves, blood vessels and bone tissue.
"We looked at progesterone because it seemed promising to promote nerve repair and regeneration. It also modulates the immune response to promote healing and triggers the regrowth of blood vessels and bones, "said neuroscientist Celia Herrero-Rincón, author of the study.
The next step for the researchers is to conduct a similar mammalian study and to seek further evidence that the drug-device combination may be a new model for testing therapeutic cocktails to induce regeneration of non-invasive species. regrowing.
Worldwide, millions of people live with a limb, lower or upper, amputee, and it is only in the United States that there are two million people.
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