The concurrent use of probiotic microorganism and collagen hydrogel/scaffold enhances burn wound healing: An in vivo evaluation Ahmad Oryan a, * , Maryam Jalili b , Amir Kamali a , Behrooz Nikahval b a Department of Pathology, School of Veterinary Medicine, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran b Department of Clinical Sciences, School of Veterinary Medicine, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran a b s t r a c t Treatment of burn wounds is technically demanding and several attempts have been taken to improve wound healing. Silver sulfadiazine antibiotic has been shown to have some beneficial effects on wound healing via reduction in infection. This study was designed to investigate the impact of collagen hydrogel-scaffold dressing with or without topical use of Saccharomyces cerevisiae on cutaneous burn wound healing in rat. Four circular 1cm cutaneous wounds were created in the dorsum back of rats, 48h post-burning. Thirty male rats were divided into the three major groups (1 –3, n=10), then the wounds in each group were equally divided into two subgroup treatments (6 treatments), (1) including (a) silver sulfadiazine (SSD) as positive control (PC) and (b) untreated wounds as negative control (NC) (2) including (c) S. cerevisiae and (S.C.) and (d) collagen scaffold (CS), (3) including (e) collagen hydrogel-scaffold (CH-S) and (f) S. cerevisiae with collagen hydrogel-scaffold (CH-S-S). In each group, the animals were euthanized at 12 and 22 days post-injury (DPI) and the skin samples were used for histopathological and biomechanical investigations. Collagen scaffold and hydrogel modu- lated the inflammation, especially when combined together. Moreover, they increased wound healing, epithelialization and biomechanical performance of wound area and also reduced the scar size. The best results gained when the combination of collagen scaffold and hydrogel were mixed with probiotic. The CH-S biological dressing along with probiotic microorganism (S.C.) significantly increased collagen content compared to the negative controls. Moreover, the CH- S-S treated lesions demonstrated greater ultimate load and stiffness compared to the untreated wounds. In conclusion, application of S. cerevisiae with a bi-phasebiological dressing (CH-S) improved the morphological and biomechanical characteristics of the healing burned wounds in rats and the results were comparable to the positive control. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd and ISBI. All rights reserved. a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Accepted 16 May 2018 Available online xxx Keywords: Burn wound Healing Collagen Hydrogel Scaffold Saccharomyces cerevisiae 1. Introduction Acute thermal injuries cause approximately 300,000 deaths annually with regard to the World Health Organization report [1]. Since burning results considerable loss of fluid and extensive tissue damage, the main functions of skin are impaired. Infection is one of the most common complications related to the burning that increases the local damage in burned wounds; however, life-threatening sepsis result in * Corresponding author. E-mail address: Oryan@shirazu.ac.ir (A. Oryan). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.burns.2018.05.016 0305-4179/© 2018 Elsevier Ltd and ISBI. All rights reserved. b u r n s x x x ( 2 0 1 8 ) x x x – x x x JBUR 5574 No. of Pages 12 Please cite this article in press as: A. Oryan, et al., The concurrent use of probiotic microorganism and collagen hydrogel/scaffold enhances burn wound healing: An in vivo evaluation, Burns (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.burns.2018.05.016 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect jo u rn al h o mep age: w ww .elsevier .co m /loc ate/b u rn s