Effects of Danggwieumja on the Healing of Full-Thickness Skin Injury in Rat

The purpose of this study was to investigate the wound healing effects of Danggwieumja (DG), which is commonly used for skin inflammation, skin wound, skin pruritus, and chronic hives etc. The 1.5 cm ${\times}$ 1.5 cm full-thickness skin wound was induced to two groups, DG (n=16) and Saline (n=16) group. The DG extract and Saline were orally administrated daily for 15 days after skin wound induction. Then, the body weight of rats and the congestion indices were daily measured for 15 days after skin wound induction. The wound contractions and epithelizations were also measured. The wound contractions were daily measured for 15 days after wound induction and wound epithelizations were measured for 8 days from day 7 after wound induction. For evaluating angiogenesis, the immunoreactivities of vWF and VEGF protein were measured immunohistochemistrically on day 15. In results, although the percentage increases in mean body weight of rats in the DG and Saline groups hve no significant differences, DG extract decreased the time of wound healing and congestion around wound, and improved wound contraction and epithelization. The contraction percentage of DG group was significantly increased on day 5 (P<0.05) and day 7 (P<0.01) than that of Saline group. DG group showed significant increase of wound epithelization on day 7 (P<0.05) as compared to Saline group. Moreover, DG extract reduced the inflammation of skin dermis and promoted the growth of vascular vessels of dermis by accelerating vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) protein. These results suggest that DG has the beneficial effects on skin incision wound and can be the suitable wound healing agent for various surgical wounds.