A chronic gluteal ulcer had gone months without responding to any treatment. The patient, a person with cancer, was facing major surgery as the only option. 👀
Then a team from CONICET and CEMIC, led by researcher Alejandro Berra together with María Ximena Guerbi and Jimena Rodrigo, decided to try something different: patches made from amniotic membrane, the tissue that covers the placenta and is normally discarded after each birth.
After 49 days, the treated area was already showing better progress than with conventional methods, and five months later the wound had closed completely. Without surgery. Without hospitalization.
In Argentina, the NGO AMNIOSBMA processes donated placentas within the first 24 hours to avoid the complex logistics of cryopreservation.
The case was documented in the journal International Journal of Molecular Sciences, and it raises a question worth asking yourself: how many tissues that we consider waste could be holding medical solutions that we still have not explored?
