Abstract
Diabetic wounds are characterized by delayed wound healing due to persistent inflammation and excessive production of reactive oxygen species. Vitamin D, which is well acknowledged to enhance intestinal calcium absorption and increase in plasma calcium level, has recently been shown to display beneficial effects in various vascular diseases by promoting angiogenesis and inhibiting inflammatory responses. However, the role of Vitamin D in diabetic wound healing is still unclear. In the present study, we investigated the role of Vitamin D in cutaneous wound healing in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic mice. Four weeks after injection of STZ, a full thickness excisional wound was created with a 6-mm diameter sterile biopsy punch on the dorsum of the mice. Vitamin D was given consecutively for 14 days by intraperitoneal injection. Vitamin D supplementation significantly accelerated wound healing in diabetic mice and improved the healing quality as assessed by measuring the wound closure rate and histomorphometric analyses. By monitoring the level of pro-inflammatory cytokines tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin (IL) 6 (IL-6), IL-1β) in the wounds, reduced inflammatory response was found in VD treatment group. Furthermore, nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) pathway was found to be involved in the process of diabetic wound healing by assessing the relative proteins in diabetic wounds. Vitamin D supplementation obviously suppressed NF-κB pathway activation. These results demonstrated that Vitamin D improves impaired wound healing in STZ-induced diabetic mice through suppressing NF-κB-mediated inflammatory gene expression.
Highlights
Diabetic foot ulcer is a severe, persistent complication of diabetes mellitus (DM) [1]
Effect of Vitamin D on blood glucose level and body weight in diabetic mice During the treatment period, blood glucose levels (Figure 1A,B) of mice in Diabetic group and VD treatment group were significantly higher than those of mice in Normal group (P0.05), indicating that Vitamin D had no effect on blood glucose
Body weight of mice in Diabetic group and VD treatment group were significantly lower than those of mice in Normal group (P0.05), indicating that Vitamin D had no effect on mice weight
Summary
Diabetic foot ulcer is a severe, persistent complication of diabetes mellitus (DM) [1]. Delayed diabetic wound healing may induce chronic infection, neuropathy, microvascular disorder, which may cause refractive diabetic foot ulcer. Various treatments have been applied for diabetic foot ulcer, including surgical repair, endovascular treatment, infection control, moist dressings, and wound offloading, wounds are often notably slow to heal and 7–20% of patients will end up with an amputation [3]. Epidemiological evidences show that low Vitamin D status is involved the development of diabetic vascular diseases [9,10,11]. It is still unclear whether Vitamin c 2018 The Author(s).
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