Promotion of Wound Healing of Genetic Diabetic Mice Treated by a Cold Atmospheric Plasma Jet

Chronic wounds are a major complication for diabetes mellitus (DM) patients, which cause discomfort and an increase in medical costs. The purpose of this study is to investigate the medical application and possible mechanisms of a cold atmospheric plasma jet in healing DM chronic wounds. In this paper, the genetic diabetic BKS.DB mice are used as the diabetic wound healing animal model, which have a stable glucose level and can avoid the effects or complications induced by surgical and chemical interventions. The helium atmospheric-pressure dielectric-barrier-discharge (AP-DBD) plasma jet is employed to treat the diabetic mice wounds with the fixed treatment time and distance of 15 s and 20.0 mm, respectively. The wound healing, histological, immunohistochemical, and cytokine analyses are conducted to evaluate the efficacy of the helium AP-DBD plasma jet on the chronic wound healing of the genetic diabetic mice. The experimental results show that the helium AP-DBD plasma jet treatment of wounds of genetic diabetic mice can regulate the secretion of transforming growth factor- $\beta $ (TGF- $\beta$ ) and fibroblast growth factors (FGFs), limit the inflammatory response and excessive cell proliferation, accelerate the process of re-epithelialization, and consequently, promote the chronic wound healing process.