Diet enrichment with a specific essential free amino acid mixture improves healing of undressed wounds in aged rats

Chronic wounds are a major, often underestimated, health problem for the elderly. Standard wound care products
are not usuallymanufactured tomeet the increased demand of nutrients by skin cells in order to regenerate
new tissue and accelerate healing. This work was therefore undertaken to establish whether wound healing
could be accelerated by nutritional supplementation with a specific mixture tailored to human need of essential
amino acids (EAAs) without topical medication. To this end, using a skin full-thickness excisional model in aged
rats,we compared the closure dynamics of undressing wounds in animals fed an EAAs-enriched diet or standard
diet. We assessed the degree of fibrosis and inflammation, as well as relevant signaling molecules such as
COL1A1, iNOS and TGFβ1. The results showed wound healing was accelerated in EAAs-fed rats, which was
accompanied by reduced inflammation and changes in TGFβ1 and COL1A1 expression. Collectively, our findings
indicate that dietary supplementation with balanced EAAs diet could serve as a strategy to accelerate wound
healing without inducing fibrosis and could therefore be a simple but pivotal therapeutic approach in human
also.