Enriched environment improves wound healing in rats
Wednesday, May 13, 2009 - 05:07
in Health & Medicine
Improving the environment in which rats are reared can significantly strengthen the physiological process of wound healing, according to a report in the online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE. Researchers from the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Shriners Burns Hospital found that giving rats living in isolation the opportunity to build nests led to faster and more complete healing of burn injuries than was seen in isolation-reared rats without nest-building materials. The study also found evidence that this effect was associated with altered gene expression in stress-associated structures in the brain...