
Brazilian city uses tilapia fish skin to treat burn victims - curtis
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/brazilian-city-uses-tilapia-fish-skin-treat-burn-victims/
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computator
> _Given the substantial supply of donated human skin, tilapia skin is
> unlikely to arrive at American hospitals anytime soon._

I'm surprised that there's no shortage of donated skin in the USA. We're
always hearing about the critical shortage of organs and appeals for blood. I
wonder what makes skin different?

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tomjakubowski
Speculation: skin grafts can be grown basically endlessly from a donated
foreskin. Circumcision is more common in the US than in Brazil. As for other
organ shortages, well, if a single foreskin can produce even ~100 square
meters of skin grafts, you don't need very many of them to meet a country's
skin needs. And ~100 m^2 of grafts per foreskin appears to be quite the
lowball:
[http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1999/02/17...](http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1999/02/17912)

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semi-extrinsic
I'd guess also cosmetic surgery in the US produces quite a bit of human skin,
although that's not expandable into skin grafts like the foreskin technique
you link to.

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rhaps0dy
This is so cool! I learned about tilapia when looking into closed-loop
hydroponics; apparently they are good at growing in tanks, growing fast, and
fertilising the water.

(if you look it up in youtube though you will get tilapia harvesting videos,
which are not the nicest)

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markdown
> closed-loop hydroponics

Aquaponics?

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rhaps0dy
I guess; I didn't realise there was a difference in the terms.

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markdown
Hydroponics and aquaponics are both considered closed-loop (compared to other
agricultural methods). Hydroponics involves growing plants.

If you're raising fish in addition to crops in your system, with the fish
excrement providing the nutrients the crops need, then you're engaged in
aquaponics.

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alisson
I'm using banana skins to treat wounds, its great, makes the wounds heal much
better and they also offer that good protection!! I don't know the science
behind it, I heard a lot of women talking about using it on the breast when
breast feeding to feel better so I started to experiment with myself and I'm
very happy with it too.

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dmix
My mom would give me these white sugar pills when I was a kid and when I woke
up saying I was sick (I had a phase where I did that often to avoid school).
They'd just happen to treat my condition specifically and always made me feel
better!

This is why I grew up to learn to only trust medical studies over anecdote.
Even then it's good to be skeptical. Placebo can be incredibly powerful.

Any sources?

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kirse
_Placebo can be incredibly powerful._

Sounds like it works and achieved the intended effect. This is why I grew past
my "I only believe what the scientists tell me to" phase and decided to
selectively trust medical studies, since it's my life and my anecdote, and
I'll decide what does or does not work in my anecdote.

~~~
dmix
Learning to appreciate the results of medical grade studies does not translate
to blindly accepting the results of any result some scientist claims.

I was merely pointing out the persuasive power of placebo affect which has
resulted in a billion dollar 'holistic' industry to treat medical conditions
and my personal experience growing up with someone who believes that non-
sense. Which gave me a strong bias towards scientific results over 'natural'
ones.

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dzhiurgis
Someone please correct me if I misunderstood, but once on Regeneratively
Speaking podcast one of the researchers explained the reason why burn scars
appear is that body is over-producing stem cells (same with many cancers) to
fight the inflammation and they've found which compounds can actually slow it
down. Was hoping this is something from the same area, but seems like a
different step.

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ChicagoBoy11
I saw this news when it first broke in Brazil, and the one thing that I still
haven't fully understood is just what benefit the Tilapia skin is actually
offering.

When I read up on it, it seems that it goes through several different
aggressive sterilization and processing stages before they are given to the
patient. With all this processing, isn't the tilapia skin at that point just a
gimmick?

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Apofis
The biggest benefit I see that it offers is that it doesn't need to be changed
daily and can stay on for the course of the treatment. That's a huge benefit
saving patients a lot of pain.

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SparkyMcUnicorn
Another thing is that when the bandages are replaced, it tears off bits of new
skin that have started to grow.

I know a girl that had 3rd degree burns on ~85-90% of her body. The doctors
said she'd die, but her family brought in some people that applied sterile
honey and a certain type of leaf over her entire body, which was far more
gentle than the bandages. It was one of the fastest recoveries doctors had
seen.

The constant care and timely honey and leaf replacement probably played a
large part to the speedy recovery, but there's a point to be made that the
standard methods for treating burns seem almost backwards as it doesn't
promote skin growth as much as protection from infection.

I'm not a doctor though, so maybe someone else has more input on this.

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fillskills
I have seen the use of boiled tea water used as antiseptic for burn victims in
rural India. The results were great for the one patient I saw getting treated.
Necessity is truly the mother of invention.

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paganel
Honey also works pretty well if applied immediately on the skin and if the
burns are not that serious to begin with. My ex-wife managed to pour burning
edible oil on her hand while she was cooking some fries, but no scar remained
because we applied honey on the affected skin almost immediately.

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ceejayoz
Having had oil burns heal _without_ honey I'd want to see some peer-reviewed
studies on its efficacy as a burn treatment first.

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aesh2Xa1
Yeah, this seems like woo. At best I would hazard to guess that the honey
provides an antibiotic effect and is perhaps a slightly acidic pH causing high
cell turnover.

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karmajunkie
Honey has an antimicrobial effect that's been known for thousands of years.
This isn't the article I went looking for about it, but interesting all the
same:

[http://www.academia.edu/2189571/Pdf_6_The_antibacterial_acti...](http://www.academia.edu/2189571/Pdf_6_The_antibacterial_activity_of_honey_and_its_role_in_treating_diseases)

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beachbum8029
The Shadow over Innsmouth?

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fmgets
*Fortaleza

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dguaraglia
Hah, funny, I did a double take when I read the article, but couldn't see the
typo (my brain just knew something was "weird" about the word.) Thanks for
solving that mystery. (For reference, I lived in Brazil for several years.)

