• Question: Are there any drugs that can increase the rate of healing in an organism?

    Asked by anon-181168 on 22 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Joey Shepherd

      Joey Shepherd answered on 22 Jun 2018:

      This is interesting. If you’re thinking about things like wounds healing quickly in skin this is something we’re working on in in our lab. We grow human skin and we make wounds or holes in it so we can study healing. There are certainly some natural ‘drugs’ that help wound healing, things like growth factors which are released naturally by our cells in response to injury. Scientists like us are looking at how we can use these natural factors to speed up healing. Also, not drugs, but physical stimulation can help increase the speed of healing – for instance using ultrasonic waves can increase bone healing speed !

    • Photo: Joanne Sharpe

      Joanne Sharpe answered on 22 Jun 2018:

      I’m not sure about this! I know there are drugs that slow down wound healing such as immunosuppressants, anti-inflammatories, and anticoagulants. Sorry I’m not much help I’m afraid.

    • Photo: Ashley Akbari

      Ashley Akbari answered on 24 Jun 2018:

      Not an expert on this, but from personal experience there are drugs you can take and activities you can do which would help speed up recovery – whether they generally speed up healing I am not sure but help your body improve to a point where they can fight infection more i think so.

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