Non-invasive electrical nerve stimulation to improve healing of chronic venous leg ulcers

Funded Activity Summary

Chronic venous leg ulcers are common in the elderly. They often last for many months or years, causing much suffering and expense (currently around $600,000,000 per year in Australia). As more and more Australians live into advanced age, more and more people will be troubled by leg ulcers, particularly as the likelihood of having a leg ulcer increases markedly in the very old. We have developed a painless, cheap treatment that improves wound healing. The treatment consists of electrical stimulation of nerves that supply the wound. Low frequency current is passed through the skin from small battery powered stimulators. We have tested this technique in laboratory animals and in just a few older people with diabetes and have shown it is remarkably effective. We now plan to test this technique properly in a large study in older adults. If successful, the electrical stimulation could result in healing of wounds in relatively few weeks that otherwise would not heal for many months. Much suffering and expense would be avoided. As people age, nerve function deteriotes. Another part of the project will explore whether electrical nerve stimulation can improve damaged nerves themselves. This will provide interesting scientific insight about nerve repair and could lead to treatments for peripheral neuropathy that occurs in diabetes and other medical conditions. Australia needs to act on this now because the number of people aged over 65 will increase from around 2.3 million at present to over 6 million in the next half century. The increase in those over 85 will be even more marked with numbers increasing four fold to over one million people. Many of these people will experience severe impairment of their quality of life from leg ulcers that could be avoided, or at least minimized if a successful treatment is developed and made available to them. Similarly, much unnecessary expense could be avoided.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2002

End Date: 01-01-2004

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $206,210.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Therapies And Therapeutic Technology

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

ageing | chronic venous leg ulcers | impaired healing | neurogenic inflammation and healing | neuropathy | non-invasive electrical nerve stimulation | peripheral neuropathy | venous leg ulcers | wound healing

Related Links