Leg Wound? Spray On New Skin

How do you heal an open wound? Try spray-on skin. US and Canadian scientists have developed a new technique that entails spraying a leg ulcer with a layer of donated skin cells and blood-clotting proteins, reports BBC. The researchers tested the spray on 228 people with the hard-to-treat leg wounds and found a remarkable acceleration of healing—70% of the skin-sprayed ulcers healed after three months, compared with only 46% with other remedies.

"The treatment we tested in this study has the potential to vastly improve recovery times and overall recovery from leg ulcers," says one of the researchers. Further studies are needed to determine how practical the medicine would be for treating the ulcers, which are typically spawned by high blood pressure in leg veins. (More leg ulcers stories.)