The Influence of Electrical Current on an Infecting Microorganism in Wounds*

Abstract

All health care personnel, especially those in the rehabilitation field, are quite familiar with the frustrations that ischemic skin ulcers engender, particularly decubiti. When preventive measures prove unsuccessful, one is faced with the problem of enhancing tissue repair of the resultant lesion. A satisfactory method for the treatment of these lesions has eluded physicians for centuries, and the variety of therapeutic techniques is exceeded only by the number of resistant ulcers.Ischemic ulcers are, by definition, areas of chronic dermal and epidermal erosion in which local hypoxia plays a major role. Aggravating factors include a multitude of pathophysiologic processes; however, most of these ulcers are sequelae of chronic venous stasis with lower extremity varicosities, peripheral arterial insufficiency, or destructive forces that act on decentralized, denervated, or even normally innervated tissue.In the past, these lesions have responded most consistently to avoidance of pressure, cleanliness, and patience. A welcome break in this routine was described by Kanof' who reported the accelerating effect of ordinary gold leaf upon the healing of decubitus ulcers. Although the study was of limited scope, in terms of ulcer type and number of patients, the inherent potential of this unique regimen seemed to warrant further evaluation and investigation.Our evaluation of the gold leaf treatment* indicated a significant acceleration in healing rate. Of particular interest was the electrometric evidence that dissipation of the negative charge from the leaf was complete in about 48 hr and also that infected ulcers were aggravated by the negatively charged gold foil. It was hypothesized that the external application of a negatively charged substance (e.g., gold leaf) forms a dipole configuration with the adjacent tissue, whose polarity thereby becomes relatively more positive and catalyzes anabolism.Armed with this hypothesis, we next evaluated healing with applied direct constant current of known intensity by means of a constant-current generator with an output range of 200-1000 PA. The treatment regimen, which utilized lowintensity direct current (LIDC), produced a healing response clearly superior to that achieved with gold leaf. Subsequent refinement of the treatment protocol has resulted in a substantial improvement in healing rate over our initial results.We were surprised to find that the effects of polarity were the opposite to those

Mechanism of electrical enhancement of efficacy of antibiotics in killing biofilm bacteria

“…This body of work has shown that electric fields and currents can be used for electroporation and electrofusion (31), electroosmosis, iontophoresis (6,(13)(14)(15), and the electroinsertion of specific proteins (30). During this work, it has been noted that electric fields and currents can influence the organization of biological membranes (10,28,31,35,40,42) and membrane analogs (1, 18), metabolic and developmental processes within both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells (19,24,34,38,42) 994-1960. Fax: (406) 994-6098. kilovolt-per-centimeter range, but a significant number (5,13,15,24,36) have also focused on the effects of low-intensity fields and currents on biological systems for which significant effects have been documented, especially embryonic systems (34).…”

“…Consequently, device-related bacterial infections are aggressively treated with combinations of antibiotics (2, 27), but in many cases, the biofilm-colonized device must still be removed to facilitate the resolution of these infections (21,37). An increasing number of laboratories have begun to examine the effects of electric fields and current densities on biological systems (1,5,15,19,28,31,34,35,38,41), mainly because of interest in the electroporation and electrofusion processes that are very useful in genetic research (31). This body of work has shown that electric fields and currents can be used for electroporation and electrofusion (31), electroosmosis, iontophoresis (6,(13)(14)(15), and the electroinsertion of specific proteins (30).…”

Anodal and cathodal pulsed electrical stimulation on skin wound healing in guinea pigs

“…But most recent studies varied the type of treatment polarity during the healing process [9][10][11][12]. Rowley et al [13] and Barranco et al [14] showed that negative polarity has antibacterial effects. Kloth and McCulloch [1], Castillo et al [8], and Alvarez et al [15] suggested the use of positive polarity to augment the migration and proliferation of epithelial cells and therefore hasten wound closing.…”

“…Also, some useful effects of negative polarity include killing microorganisms [13][14], removing necrotic tissues due to decreasing pH of the wound environment [25], limiting protein molecule infiltration and therefore limiting formation of edema in the injury site [26], and increasing fibroblast cell proliferation and collagen synthesis [27][28].…”

Antimicrobial effect of vancomycin electro-transferred water against methicillin-resistant <i>Staphylococcus aureus<?i> variant

“…There is a number of products known as capable of inhibiting microbial growth, including the conventional (orthodox medicine) antibiotics or antimicrobial agents (Mc Donnell and Rusell, 1999;Lavin, 2000;Takahashi et al, 2003) or by using unconventional approaches such as electric and magnetic fields; for instance, an early contribution from Rowley et al (1974), showed an inhibition of infecting microorganisms in human wounds by exposure to alternated electric fields. More recently, Qin et al (1996) reported that processing liquid foods with high-intensity pulsed electric fields, and inactivated micro-organisms.…”