Diabetic foot ulcers

In Denmark, 353,000 people have diabetes, and almost one in four of these patients will have a chronic diabetic foot ulcer in the course of their lives. In patients with diabetic foot ulcers, mortality is comparable with mortality in cancer patients. Every year, about 800 Danish patients undergo amputations related to their diabetes.

“With support from the Vissing Foundation for an inter-regional trial with 100 patients, we will investigate a new Danish surgical method called inforatio technique to treat patients with chronic diabetic foot ulcers. The treatment involves carefully making small cuts on wound beds with a sterile punch. This is a gentle method to produce fresh bleeding and a response in the tissue of the wound, which imitates the healing pattern in a normal fresh wound,” explains Dr Sahar Moeini from the Orthopaedic Department at Zealand University Hospital, Køge.

He says that a previous pilot trial in 2019 showed promising results with the inforatio technique.

If the inforatio technique has a positive effect on wound healing, we expect to see benefits in the form of faster healing of the ulcers, fewer hospitalisations, fewer surgical procedures, less use of antibiotics, and, in the longer term, fewer leg amputations. This treatment is simple and inexpensive, and has the potential to become a ground-breaking supplement to current standard ulcer treatments,” says Sahar Moeini.

An EV array consists of a microchip that can register and identify extracellular vesicles in biological liquids and determine their concentration level. The department wants to invest in a special microarray printer which is able to print several chips at the same time.

This allows researchers to intensify their research efforts using the same resources and to develop this important diagnostic tool to a level where it can be used in general medical contexts and at laboratories. The goal is to identify the presence of cancer cells as early as possible, thereby improving the positive effects of important treatments.