Early trial shows promising results with simvastatin in Wound Healing

An lab-based trial has found that topically applied generic statin simvastatin accelerates Wound Healing in diabetic mice, with important implications if the effect occurs in humans with Diabetes. The investigators treated wounds on mice with an application of either simvastatin in petroleum jelly or petroleum jelly alone. Treatment was repeated on days four, seven, and ten. After two weeks, the simvastatin-treated wounds were more than 90% healed, while in the wounds treated using petroleum jelly alone, less than 80% had healed. The peak difference in wound closure was reached after a week: at this point the simvastatin-treated wounds were 79% healed compared with 52% for placebo. "This study suggests that topical simvastatin significantly accelerates wound recovery by increasing both angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis. Our observations suggest that the favorable effects of simvastatin on lymphangiogenesis are due both to a direct influence on lymphatics and indirect effects via macrophages homing to the wound" says Dr Jun Asai who led a team from the Departments of Dermatology and Ophthalmology of Kyoto Prefectural University School of Medicine, the Department of Dermatology at Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Hamamatsu and Shiseido Innovative Scientific Research Center, Yamamoto, Japan. Results were published in the The American Journal of Pathology. See: "Topical simvastatin accelerates wound healing in diabetes by enhancing angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis", Jun Asai, Hideya Takenaka, Satoshi Hirakawa, et al. The American Journal of Pathology. Volume 181, Issue 6 (December 2012).