Effect of Natural Medicines on Dermal Fibroblasts in Wound Healing: An In-Vitro Study

Natural medicinal systems like Ayurveda, has remedies for wound treatment and management. However the exact cellular and extracellular mechanisms involved in the healing process and its influence on fibroblasts is seldom known. This is important because fibroblast is one of the major entities which play a significant role in wound healing. Therefore the present study was designed to evaluate the effect of some natural wound healing medicines used in Ayurveda on the biology of the dermal fibroblast. Test materials such as honey, ghee, aqueous extracts of roots of Glycyrrhiza glabra and leaves of Nerium indicum, were obtained as per the standard protocol. The dermal fibroblasts obtained from rat skin samples were treated with test materials singly or in combinations for a specific period of time in the culture. After the treatment period, cells were subjected to cytotoxicity/proliferation assay, migration/scratch assay and finally the RNA was isolated from them and expression level of FGF2 was evaluated by RT-PCR. All the test materials except Nerium indicum were non cytotoxic and showed increased cell proliferation rate in comparison with the untreated cells. Nerium indicum on the contrary was cytotoxic to the dermal fibroblasts in all the doses calculated. In the in vitro wound healing assay, the test materials had no influence on the migration of the fibroblasts. Further, the Nerium indicum showed maximum inhibition for migration of fibroblasts across the scratch. But the expression of FGF2 was higher in all the tested groups compared to the untreated cells. The preliminary results obtained from the present study indicate the influence of these natural wound healing compounds on fibroblasts. Further evaluation is required to understand the intricate cellular and molecular mechanism of these test materials which may help us to design the appropriate combination of test materials in s challenging wounds.