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Doctors in Brazil using tilapia fish skin to treat burn victims

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/brazilian-city-uses-tilapia-fish-skin-treat-burn-victims
46•kaycebasques•2h ago

Comments

sMarsIntruder•1h ago
> In the US, animal-based skin substitutes require levels of scrutiny from the Food and Drug Administration and animal rights groups that can drive up costs, Lee said. Given the substantial supply of donated human skin, tilapia skin is unlikely to arrive at American hospitals anytime soon.

This reminds me of Milton Friedman’s arguments against the FDA.

lukebitts•1h ago
I wonder what’s the difference between countries that drives that. It’s not like Brazil doesn’t have its own FDA, which is much more strict than the US one, from what I know. Maybe some kind of lobbying? Or are animal rights group that much stronger?
MattGaiser•1h ago
I imagine it is about this:

> 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
> This is not an improvement on existing methods... a case of it being all they have to work with.

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
It says it's different to human skin in multiple aspects.

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
I was having a conversation about this with my father-a retired pharmaceutical industry executive-a few weeks back, about why certain generic prescription medication formulations were unavailable in Australia yet sold in New Zealand. He explained to me that the Australian pharmaceutical regulator (the TGA) and its New Zealand equivalent (Medsafe) had very different regulatory philosophies. Medsafe, if a major international regulator (such as the US FDA or the EU’s EMA) had already approved something, they’ll just approve it too (“if it is good enough for them it is good enough for us”); the TGA’s attitude was very different, just because the FDA or EMA had approved it didn’t mean they automatically would, they wanted to analyse the safety data for themselves and make up their own mind. For blockbuster patented drugs, the extra regulatory cost of Australia was worth it, but for the long tail of miscellaneous generic formulations, the extra cost of dealing with the TGA could make some of them financially nonviable.
tehjoker•18m ago
Medsafe's strategy only works so long as there is at least one stringent regulator though.
sammy_rulez•1h ago
It's old news. There is even “And Dream of Sheep” — Grey’s Anatomy, Season 15 Episode 17. That’s the episode where they mention using tilapia fish skin to treat burns. Original U.S. air date: March 14, 2019.
petesergeant•57m ago
And a 2017 Good Doctor episode
elemdos•53m ago
Old news comes off dismissive. Doesn’t have to be a brand new discovery to be noteworthy.
elric•52m ago
Doesn't make it any less interesting. And in spite of it not being new, it doesn't look like it's out of the experimental stage: the article mentions it's difficult to get the tilapia skin processed and sterilized.
primaprashant•54m ago
They used this exact treatment in an episode of The Good Doctor, S01E06. Original air date: October 30, 2017

https://the-good-doctor.fandom.com/wiki/Not_Fake

theblackknight_•11m ago
I was thinking same, Jared saving that girls skin after burn.
kiernanmcgowan•48m ago
I've read Dune - I know exactly where this is going. Please do not apply sand trout directly to you skin unless you are ready to control the spice.
01100011•47m ago
I'm pretty sure they've done this for decades. I seem to remember someone using potato skins like 30 years ago.
vasco•35m ago
This has been going for long enough that there's been several metastudies debunking it. Was hyped in the news around 2017.

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.

trhway•25m ago
fish skin (rich in collagen) sounds like a version of collagen patch. And for collagen patch for example https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3081477/ where despite the "Conclusion" the "Results" show that it helps (and one can also expect that collagen patching is starting point to engineering artificial skin) :

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.

fhe•19m ago
I thought this a pretty mature technique? I have seen more than once our local vet using this technique to treat cats with large wounds -- with great results by the way. Interestingly, they too used tilapia fish skin, and not any of the more common local fish species. I wonder if there is something special about tilapia fish skin, or it was simply the species on which the technique was developed, and nobody bothered to try using other fish species.
sublinear•15m ago
What's special is that tilapia is probably cheaper than even the local fish since it's farmed in massive quantities and shipped all over the world as food.

If other fish skins were tried it must have been similar results.

max_•16m ago
TLDR;

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.

throwaway290•7m ago
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182•williamzeng0•8h ago•23 comments

Doctors in Brazil using tilapia fish skin to treat burn victims

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/brazilian-city-uses-tilapia-fish-skin-treat-burn-victims
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