Role of Thymus Oil in Burn Wound Healing

Abstract

Thymus oil and its components are becoming increasingly popular as naturally occurring antimicrobial and antioxidant agents. The real importance of thymus on nitric oxide (NO) is unknown. NO is an important mediator in numerous physiologic and pathophysiologic events. Stasis and thrombosis in burn wound can progress as a result of the release of local mediators. The implication of NO in burn injury is not well studied. In this study, we tried to determine the role of burn-induced NO and whether thymus oil plays a protective role after a thermal injury. Rats were divided into five groups. We topically applied thymus oil, olive oil, and silverdin and sulfadiazine on the rats, respectively, during a period of 21 days after they were burned while under anesthesia. The burned control group and nonburned control group did not receive any treatment. The results of this study show that NO was overproduced by thermal injury and decreased during the days after burn injury. The decrease in rats treated with thymus and sulfadiazine was higher than the others. These data indicate that thymus oil may serve as a protective agent to the damaged tissues by decreasing the NO level. Histologic examination results show that the formation of new tissue in rats receiving thymus oil was more than other burned groups, and this finding supports our hypothesis.