On diabetic foot, wound healing, amputation prevention, and the merger of consumer tech with medical devices
A new bibliometric analysis from Wei and colleagues at Capital Medical University in Beijing maps 25 years (2000–2024) of global research on plantar pressure and diabetic foot ulcers — over 2,100 publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection. The findings tell a story that will feel familiar to many of us who have... Continue Reading →
This is the kind of study that should make every clinician who manages the diabetic foot sit up a little straighter. The DM PAD study — a prospective, multicentre diagnostic accuracy study across 16 NHS centres and 604 patients — just landed in Health Technology Assessment. Led by Burgess, Normahani, and colleagues at Imperial College... Continue Reading →
Honored to deliver the keynote at the inaugural meeting of ADFA in Paris.
Chronic wounds are biological computers stuck in a boot loop. Sharp debridement is Control-Alt-Delete — the histological reboot that converts a chronic wound back into an acute one. Only then can you run the apps.
A new Cell paper shows nerve hyperinnervation suppresses skin regeneration -- and botulinum toxin A removes the brake. For diabetic foot ulcers, this could be the breakthrough we've been waiting 30 years for.
A new systematic review finds that roughly one in three adults in remission after a healed diabetic foot ulcer develop a recurrent ulcer within 12 months — a risk comparable to several common cancers. Healing is the beginning of the next chapter, not the end of the story.
A few weeks ago, we launched The ZIP Code Lottery — a data narrative showing how amputation rates in Los Angeles County track almost perfectly with poverty, not clinical severity. It struck a nerve. The response told us something important: people want to see the data, and they want it to be impossible to look... Continue Reading →
We have been tracking the emerging science of the wound microbiome on this blog for well over a decade -- from Randy Wolcott's early observations on "misanthropic microbial communities" (2009), to our own work with Spichler, Hurwitz, and Lipsky on microbiology from Louis Pasteur to "CSI" (2015), to the microbiome in wound healing -- good,... Continue Reading →
A few weeks ago, we launched The ZIP Code Lottery — a data narrative showing how amputation rates in Los Angeles County track almost perfectly with poverty, not clinical severity. It struck a nerve. The response told us something important: people want to see the data, and they want it to be impossible to look... Continue Reading →
A new accelerometer-based study from Michigan and Oxford shows that moderate-to-vigorous physical activity is associated with significantly lower odds of diabetic peripheral neuropathy — with vigorous activity cutting the odds by 60%.
