Scarring Treatments Have a New Scar Healing Agent Taken from a Land Snail

Restore the physical properties of the skin by applying Helix Aspersa Muller Glycoconjugates to hypertrophic scars or stretchmarks. This will recover skin density and strength to the area, allowing for greater movement and flexibility.

Scars and the Skin Repair Process

The elimination or reduction of scars, lesions, and stretch marks from the skin depends on a process called "skin remodeling".

The skin is designed to repair wounds rapidly to avoid blood loss and infections. Scars are created from a quickly formed "collagen glue" that the body brings into an damaged area for defense and strength. In ideal skin repairing, wounded skin is quickly closed, and then the healed area is slowly repaired to remove the remaining collagen scars and blend the skin area into nearby skin.

Scar collagen is removed and replaced with a mix of skin cells and invisible collagen fibers. This work may continue in a skin area for up to ten years.

In children, the remodeling speed is high and scars are often rapidly removed from damaged skin areas. But as we become adults, this rate slows down and small scars may stay there for years.

One way to accelerate remodeling is to provoke a small amount of controlled skin damage with a needle, laser, acid, or other means, and then let the body repair processes reconstruct the skin area.

A second method is to use enzymes and fibroblast proliferators to increase the body's natural rebuilding mechanisms and achieve even better final results. Fibroblasts are the cells in the basal membrane of the skin and they are the precursors of all the structural elements of healthy skin, including those that give moisture, tensile strength and elasticity to skin. Enzymes dissolve or "digest" damaged and dying cells.

Wound Repair Process

Scars are always needed to reconnect skin that has been injured. Initially, they may be red or dark and rose after the wound has been healed but will become paler and flatter naturally over time, resulting in a flat, pale scar.

For reasons that are yet to be fully understood, some people form raised scars that are red and thick and may be itchy or painful. Others develop scars that grow beyond the site of a wound, called keloid scars.

Keloid scars are actually thick, itchy, puckered scars that grow beyond the edges of a wound or incision and rarely regress. They occur when the body keeps producing tough, fibrous protein (known as collagen) after a wound has healed.

Keloid scars can result from any type of injury to the skin, including scratches, tattoos, insect bites, injections or medical procedures. Keloid scars can appear anywhere on the body, but most commonly occur over the breastbone, on earlobes and on shoulders.

Keloids are fibrotic tumors characterized by a collection of atypical fibroblasts with high deposition of extracellular matrix components, especially collagen, fibronectin, elastin, and proteoglycans. Histologically, keloids contain relatively acellular centers and thick, abundant collagen bundles that form nodules in the deep dermal portion of the lesion. Keloids present a clinical challenge that must be addressed as these lesions can cause significant pain, pruritus (itch) and physical disfigurement, may not improve in appearance over time, and can even limit mobility if located over a joint.

Hypertrophic scars use to be difficult to distinguish from keloid scars histologically and biochemically, but unlike keloids, hypertropic scars are confined to the wounded site and use to mature and flatten out over time. Both types produce larger amounts of collagen than normal scars, but often the hypertrophic type exhibits declining collagen synthesis after about six months. Hypertrophic scars contain about twice as much glycosaminoglycans as normal scars, and this and enhanced synthetic and enzymatic reactions result in significant changes in the matrix which affects the mechanical properties of the scars, including decreased extensibility that makes them feel firm.

As with hypertrophic scarring, people having one keloid scar are likely to be prone to this condition in the future and should speak with their doctor or surgeon if they are likely to need injections or to have any kind of surgery.

Atrophic scars are characterized by a thinning and diminished elasticity of the skin due to a loss of normal skin architecture. An example of an atrophic scar is striae distensae, also known as stretch marks.

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