Skin Wound Healing Potential and Antioxidant Effect of Hyaluronic Acid Extracted from Mytilus galloprovincialis and Crassostrea gigas

This research work was devoted to studying the ability of hyaluronic acid (HA) to treat skin wounds in rats. HA, an immune-neutral polysaccharide, is widespread in the human body as it is necessary for several tissues and cellular functions and has been used in the clinical practice for more than three decades. For this purpose, we attempted to obtain and enrich HA-containing extracts from two species of molluscs collected at Bizerte lagoon, namely Mytilus galloprovincialis and Crassostrea gigas. Then, the wound healing potential of purified HA (hyaluronan) was tested on Wistar rats which were separated into 4 groups: control, treated with a marketed healing cream “Avene Cicalfate”, treated with HA isolated from M. galloprovincialis, and treated with HA isolated from C. gigas. After anesthesia, rats were submitted to back skin lesions (diameter 2 cm) and then treated daily until recovery. During the experiment, variation of the wound area was monitored. Results showed that the obtained net yield of HA was 3.8 mg/g dry weight and 1.9 mg/g dry weight for M. galloprovincialis and C. gigas respectively. Morphological analysis demonstrated that HA significantly accelerated wound repair through reepithelization. The mean wound surface was completely absent after 15 days of treatment with C. gigas hyaluronan. Based on these findings, it appears that mollusc HA has an obvious healing activity completely in accordance with its recognized effectiveness in dermo-cosmetology.