Introduction: Impaired diabetic wound healing is an important issue in diabetic complications. The present study aims to evaluate the protective effect on glycemic control against impaired diabetic wound healing using a diabetic rat model. We investigated the wound healing process and effect on the impaired wound repair by glycemic control in the Spontaneously Diabetic Torii (SDT) fatty rat, which is a new animal model of obese type 2 diabetes and may be a good model for study impaired wound healing.
Material and methods: Male SDT fatty rats at 15 weeks of age were administered orally with sodium glucose co-transporter (SGLT) 2 inhibitor for 3 weeks. Wounds were induced at 2 weeks after SGLT 2 inhibitor treatment, and the wound areas were periodically examined in morphological and histological analyses.
Results: The SDT fatty rats showed a delayed wound healing as compared with the normal rats, but a glycemic control improved the impaired wound healing. In histological analysis in the skin of SDT fatty rats showed severe infiltration of inflammatory cell, hemorrhage and many bacterial masses in the remaining and slight fibrosis of crust on skin tissue. Thought that this results skin performance to be a delay of crust formation and regeneration of epithelium; however, these findings were ameliorated in the SGLT 2 inhibitor treated group.
Conclusion: Glycemic control is effective for treatment in diabetic wounds and the SDT fatty rat may be useful to investigate pathophysiological changes in impaired diabetic wound healing.
Keywords: blood glucose; diabetic complication; rat; sodium-glucose transporter 2; wound healing.