Vitamin A heals diabetic foot ulcers

A vitamin A compound commonly used to treat acne improves the healing of foot ulcers in patients with diabetes. Researchers from the Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, USA, conducted a clinical trial with 24 volunteers who had diabetic foot ulcers but who had no evidence of infection or circulation problems in the extremities. The patients were randomly assigned to 4 weeks of daily treatment with topical 0.05 percent tretinoin solution or a saline solution (the control group). Wound size was assessed every 2 weeks. The 22 patients who completed the study had a total of 24 foot ulcers. It was found that two of the 11 ulcers in the control group (18 percent) and 6 of the 13 ulcers in the treated group (46 percent) healed completely at the end of 16 weeks. There were no statistically significant adverse events, although some patients experienced mild pain at the ulcer site. Since tretinoin is very irritating, the researchers thought that the patients would become so irritated that they wouldn't be able to continue the study. But actually, that didn't seem to be a problem in most cases. The patients seemed to get used to it. The researchers hope that diabetic foot clinics do adopt some of this, and use Retin-A when some of the other therapies that they are using don't work.