A Diabetic Mice Model For Studying Skin Wound Healing

Advances in wound treatment depend on the availability of suitable animal models. All animal models try to reflect human wound healing problems. For acute wounds, it is easier to obtain adequate animal models, however, for chronic wounds such as those found in individuals with diabetic foot ulcer, approximations of the clinical picture become a challenge. Nowadays, the key points of wound healing processes are better understood, and therefore, therapeutic strategies can be developed to manipulate wound repair. Research efforts involves the development of therapies to aid in the treatment of impaired wound healing and, to improving normal wound healing to drive a process close to regenerative. To achieve a better animal model that is more appropriate for studying wound healing, six-week- old male C57BL/6 mice were separated into groups fed a Chow and High-Fat Diet for 0.5, 3, and 6 months, when part of the animals were induced to diabetes by streptozotocin. Then, mice were submitted to metabolic, molecular, and morphological analyses. We show that this model results in a severe metabolic phenotype with insulin resistance, reduced insulin expression, and glucose intolerance associated with obesity and, more importantly, skin changes. Furthermore, the skin phenotype, both structurally and transcriptionally, overlapped with conditions found in elderly patients with DM that reproduce the phenotype of most patients who develop diabetic foot ulcers.