Immediate intervention effect of dielectric barrier discharge on acute inflammation in rabbit’s ear wound

Abstract

Acute inflammation is an anti-injury stress response which is beneficial to the human body. However, if the duration of acute inflammation is prolonged in specific people, such as critically ill patients and people with low resistance, it will worsen the disease and increase complication rates. Most medical researchers are committed to finding an effective method to shorten the duration of acute inflammation. The purpose of our work is to shorten the duration of acute inflammation in a rabbit’s ear wound by dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) low temperature plasma. The distribution and quantity of inflammatory cells in the rabbit’s ear wound treated by plasma were studied and calculated by using a high power optical microscope and Image J software. The reactive species of plasma were characterized by optical emission spectroscopy. The results showed that the number of inflammatory cells decreased from 2312.17 ± 242.52 to 880.17 ± 89.08 after plasma treatment for 3 min. In addition, plasma has a coagulation effect on the rabbit’s ear wound. Our results indicated that DBD low temperature plasma could be an effective tool to decrease the inflammatory response time and the inflammation was further alleviated with increased treatment time.