Evaluation of burn wound healing potential of aqueous extract of Morus alba based cream in rats

Abstract

The present protocol was designed to compare the effects of Morus alba (MA) aqueous extract based cream on healing of burn wounds in rats. Fifty adult, male Wistar-albino rats were divided into five groups. The first group served as a sham control group. The animals in this group underwent shaving on the back without any burn injury. Burn was generated on the backs of all the rats in second, third, fourth and fifth group. The animals of second group served as burn injury control group and did not receive any treatment. The burned areas of the rats in the third, fourth and fifth groups were covered daily with a cream base, SSD cream and MA creasm (20% MA aqueous extract based cream) respectively. The percentage of wound contraction in a period of 11 days was observed, followed by observation in the period of epithelialization of the wound till the 21st day after injury. On the 21st day, the rats were sacrificed and the burn wound skin tissue samples were collected for histopathological examinations. Morphological and histo-pathological evaluations showed burn healing to be better in the MA and SSD groups with respect to the burn injury control group. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the MA cream treated group had a significantly better rate of burn wound healing than the SSD group. In conclusion, application of MA cream (20% MA aqueous extract based cream) proved to be highly effective in healing burn related skin wounds in the rat model.