Fish skin or silver sulfadiazine had similar effects and to me are both approximating placebo from the studies I read. The fish does nothing for pain and no difference in the scarring time vs the silver ointments.
Results:
With two weeks of treatment, 60% of the ‘collagen group’ wounds and only 42% of the ‘conventional group’ wounds were sterile (P=0.03). Healthy granulation tissue appeared earlier over collagen-dressed wounds than over conventionally treated wounds (P=0.03). After eight weeks, 52 (87%) of ‘collagen group’ wounds and 48 (80%) of ‘conventional group’ wounds were >75% healed (P=0.21). Eight patients in the ‘collagen group’ and 12 in the ‘conventional group’ needed partial split-skin grafting (P=0.04). Collagen-treated patients enjoyed early and more subjective mobility.
Conclusion:
No significant better results in terms of completeness of healing of burn and chronic wounds between collagen dressing and conventional dressing were found. Collagen dressing, however, may avoid the need of skin grafting, and provides additional advantage of patients’ compliance and comfort.
If other fish skins were tried it must have been similar results.
Its a fantastic substitute for bandages in the sense that you don't need to take off the fish skin everyday.
Its also better are retaining moisture in the burn wounds than cotton badages.
No need for antibiotics, painkillers etc
Its also really cheap. Fish farms regard them as waste.
sMarsIntruder•1h ago
This reminds me of Milton Friedman’s arguments against the FDA.
lukebitts•1h ago
MattGaiser•1h ago
> But Brazil lacks the human skin, pig skin, and artificial alternatives that are widely available in the US.
This is not an improvement on existing methods (it may end up being, but that is not the motivation) but rather a case of it being all they have to work with.
Tilapia skin is probably better than no skin at all.
hu3•32m ago
But the article says Tilapia skin is better in multiple aspects:
> "We got a great surprise when we saw that the amount of collagen proteins, types 1 and 3, which are very important for scarring, exist in large quantities in tilapia skin, even more than in human skin and other skins," Maciel said. "Another factor we discovered is that the amount of tension, of resistance in tilapia skin is much greater than in human skin. Also the amount of moisture."
dmurray•18m ago
Do I need more collagen or more moisture in my skin? I would expect evolution made some pretty good choices around default human skin for typical human activities, and if more moisture was obviously good, I would already have it.
Maybe tilapia skin is better for people who spend 24 hours a day swimming in lakes.
skissane•28m ago
tehjoker•18m ago