Pharmaceutical Design and Evaluation of a Diabetic Wound Healing Therapy Inspired from the Cameroonian Pharmacopeia

Diabetic wounds are open sores that occur in approximately 15 percent of patients with diabetes and are commonly located on the bottom of the foot. The management of diabetic foot ulcers remains a serious challenge as several cases of limb amputations and deaths are recorded every year, despite the clinical management therapies available. The Cameroonian pharmacopeia has been proven to be a potential source of therapies for diabetic foot ulcers. Amongst other plants, Vernonia amygdalina and Dacryodes edulis have been shown to exhibit significant wound healing activity alongside diabetes management activity. This study aimed at designing and evaluating gels from the leaves of V. amygdalina and D. edulis for the management of diabetic wounds. For this purpose, streptozotocin-induced diabetic albino rats were used. The wound healing efficacy of the leaves of these plants was evaluated on excision wounds of 4cm2 in diabetic rats after which analysis of mean contraction rates generated during the experiment was done using GraphPad Prism version 5. We realized that there was no statistically significant difference in the wound healing rate in animals treated with these plants, the positive control group and the negative control group in which animals were not treated. In total, four gels were formulated based on the aforementioned plants. Pharmaceutical evaluation of each gel was done and all gels presented with good pharmaceutical characteristics. The wound healing efficacy of each gel was equally evaluated and after data analysis, we realized that there was equally no statistically significant difference between the negative control gel (F3) and the other gels which were formulated F1, F2 and F4.