Fish Skin Burn Treatment

As the largest organ in our body, skin plays a vital role as the first line of defense for our overall health and well-being.  Burns and chronic foot ulcers are just two types of wounds that present a challenge for both healthcare providers and their patients.  In general, wound healing may be complicated by graft rejections, graft-transmitted diseases, infections, pain, and substantial socioeconomic and treatment-related costs.  Researchers in Iceland and Brazil are using fish skin to help minimize the negative effects of healing skin wounds.

Kerecis, a biotechnology company based in Iceland, is using skin from Atlantic cod for burn wounds, in the first FDA-approved form of this treatment.  Gudmunder Fertram Sigurjonsson, founder, president, and CEO of Kerecis, explained the process to Newsweek: "The doctor receives our fish skin in sterile packaging.  She inspects the wound and with a knife cuts away all dead tissue and makes the wound red and bleeding.  The fish skin is then inserted into the wound and a wound dressing applied on top of the fish skin.  We only produce the fish skin; wound dressings from any vendor can be applied on top.  The healthy cells from the wound perimeter will then crawl into the fish skin and over time convert it to human skin.  The fish skin is never removed from the patient."  This fish skin is so versatile because it is strong, pliable, tear-resistant, and only needs to be briefly rehydrated with saline before use.  It also has a long shelf life of nearly 3 years and can be stored at room temperature.

Dr. Christopher Winters, Chair of the American College of Clinical Wound Specialists, explained, "When grafted onto damaged human tissue... the material recruits the body's own cells and is ultimately converted into living tissue.  This is an acellular dermal matrix that allows the body' own cells to incorporate into the fish skin tissue."  This is because the fish cells are removed from the fish skin structure, including all the fish's DNA, meaning that the human body doesn't recognize the skin graft as a foreign body, happily colonizing the skin structure, a UN report says.  

Using cod fish skin reduces the chances of autoimmune rejections and disease transmissions, according to a paper in the journal Military Medicine.  These adverse reactions can often occur as a result of the application of cadaver and pig skin grafts.  Diseases that can pass between other skin grafts from animals or cadaver donors, including mad cow disease or swine flu, cannot be transferred from the fish skin graft.  "The fish skin has no risk of disease transmission, so the manufacturer doesn't have to prepare it in the same way it would tissue from mammals," vascular surgeon Dr. Karl Stark said.  "That allows the tissue to be more normal in structure and integrate better into human tissue, causing the cells to advance quickly."  The alpha omega fatty acids also work as an anti-inflammatory agent to improve patients' pain levels.

The fish skin can also be used for other forms of skin damage, including diabetic skin wounds and skin trauma.  On its website, Kerecis describes the story of one patient whose limb was saved by the fish skin treatment.  Chester Kitt, a 70-year-old fisherman from Seattle, developed a wound on his foot after a partial amputation that was struggling to heal due to his diabetes, to the point that there were fears that his entire foot would have to be amputated.  Dr. Mikhail Burakovskiy at Integrative Foot & Ankle Centers of Everett, Washington, decided he would try putting a Kerecis fish skin graft on Chester Kitt's wound.  After only three weeks of the Kerecis treatment, Mr. Kitt stated that his wound had entirely healed, allowing him to walk again, keep his foot, and regain his freedom.