Healing Effect of Hypericum perforatum in Burn Injuries.

Abstract

Background: Burn injury is still the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in burn patients. We comapred healing effect of Hypericum perforatum, silver sulfadiazine and alpha ointments on burn injuries in rat model.

Methods: Sixty female Sprague-Dawley rats in an animal experimental study were randomly divided to 5 equal groups as H. perforatum, silver sulfadiazine and (SSD), alpha, gel base and the burn injury left untreated. Wounds were assessed macroscopically and histologic after burn injury and on days 7^th, 14^th and 21^st after treatments.

Results: Burn wounds decreased in size on day 7^th in H. perforatum group (P<0.01). Regarding scoring the inflammation, re-epithelialization, angiogenesis, formation of granulation tissue and number of macrophage, the best scores were visible in H. perforatum group, and the worst in the gel base and the burn injury left untreated (P<0.01).

Conclusions: H. perforatum was shown to significantly induce re-epithelialization, angiogenesis and granulation tissue and decrease the inflammation resulting into a healing process in burn wounds. As H. perforatum is inexpensive and an easily available herbal medicine, it can be considered as a therapeutic of choice to ameliorate burn injuries.