Abstract
Chronic wounds significantly burden healthcare systems worldwide,
requiring novel strategies to ease their impact. Many physiological
processes underlying wound healing are well studied but the role of mast
cells is controversial. Mast cells are innate immune cells and play an
essential role in barrier function by inducing inflammation to defend
the host against chemical irritants, infections, etc. Many mast
cell-derived mediators have proposed roles in wound healing; however, in
vivo evidence using mouse models has produced conflicting results.
Recently, studies involving more complex wound models such as infected
wounds, diabetic wounds and wounds healing under psychological stress,
suggest that mast cells play critical roles in these processes. This
review briefly summarizes the existing literature regarding mast cells
in normal wounds and potential reasons for the contradictory results. A
focus will be placed on examining more recent work emerging in the last
5 years exploring mast cells in more complex systems of wound healing
including infection, psychological stress and diabetes with a discussion
of how these discoveries may inspire future work in the field.