Refined Spruce Resin to Treat Chronic Wounds: Rebirth of an Old Folkloristic Therapy

The treatment of chronic wounds results in an enormous drain on healthcare resources in terms of workload, costs, frustration, and impaired quality of life, and it presents a clinical challenge for physicians worldwide. Effective local treatment of a chronic wound has an important role, particularly in patients who are-because of their poor general condition, diminished life expectancy, or unacceptable operative risk-outside of surgical treatment. Since 2002, our multidisciplinary research group has investigated the properties of Norway spruce () resin in wound healing and its therapeutic applications in wound care. Resin is a complex mixture of resin acids ( abietic, neoabietic, dehydroabietic, pimaric, isopimaric, levopimaric, sandrakopimaric, and palustric acids) and lignans ( pino-, larici-, matairesinol, and p-hydroxycinnamic acid) having substantial antimicrobial, wound-healing, and skin regeneration enhancing properties. The cornerstone in successful wound care is an efficient causal treatment of the underlying co-morbidities, for example, diabetes, malnutrition, vascular- or certain systemic diseases. However, definitive diagnosis and specific therapy of a chronic wound is often difficult, because the etiology is practically always multi-factorial, and in the chronic phase, confounding factors such as infections invariably impede wound healing. To study the exact molecular mechanism of actions by which resin promotes cellular regeneration and epithelialization during the wound-healing process. To investigate potential antimicrobial properties of resin against the most ominous multidrug-resistant beta-lactamase (including carbapenemases and metallo-β-lactamases) producing bacteria, and to individualize those pharmacologically active compounds which are responsible for the antimicrobial activity of resin.