Electrical control of cell behaviour and wound healing

Electrical measurements from wounded skin were made first in the nineteenth century by the great German physiologist Emile Du Bois Reymond. The significance of these wound currents in driving wound healing has only recently been fully appreciated. The existence and measurement of injury currents along with the underlying ionic basis for electrical signals, which is associated with wounds to skin and to cornea, is of essential importance for directing cell migration and cell division at a wound edge and the clarification of the electrical signal to act as an early and perhaps overriding coordinating signal for the wound healing response offer new perspectives for wound therapy.