Because of some disadvantages of current drugs that are
used for the treatment of burn wounds, annually new
research is conducted for finding new drugs for burn
management. Today, studies indicate that administration of
some strain of probiotic bacteria (oral or topical) may have
beneficial effects on the wound healing process. Spray
drying is an inexpensive method for long-term
preservation of bacteria. Because effects of probiotics are
special and strain-dependent, the aim of present study was
to evaluate the effects of Streptococcus thermophilus in
spray-dried state on the second-degree burn wound healing
process. For this, second-degree burn wounds were
induced on the back of 80 male Wistar rats. Then the rats
randomly allocated to four groups: one negative control
(received nothing), two vehicle controls (received topical
Eucerin and skim milk) and one experimental groups
(received bacteria in Eucerin, topically) during the
experiment periods (14 days). The wound surface areas
were measured on days 1, 3, 7 and 14 of the experiments.
Moreover, the skin of the wound areas were harvested for
microscopic evaluation of the healing process. The results
showed that in 3rd and 7th days of the experiments, the
experimental group had significantly higher percent of
wound healing than control groups. Moreover,
microscopic analysis showed that in the wounds received
the bacteria the fibroblastic migration, density of
granulation tissue and re-epithelialization were higher than
control groups.