What They Found in a Pineapple Stem Could Revolutionize Medicine
Modern medicine has stumbled upon a breakthrough made possible by a humble, everyday fruit.
A new cream derived from enzymes contained in the stems of pineapples has shown promising results for burn patients of New York’s Stony Brook Medicine.
Recently approved by the FDA and made commercially available on Sept. 20, the cream, called NexoBrid, uses the enzyme bromelain to essentially dissolve away the burned skin, allowing severe burns to heal without the need for surgery and skin grafts, Fox News reported.
According to local news outlet WLSN-TV, Dr. Steven Sandoval, director of the burn center at Stony Brook Medicine, explained that “bromelain actually does all the work for us.”
Dr. Adam Singer, an emergency medicine physician at Stony Brook, told Fox New, “You apply it to the burn, and within four hours, it dissolves the burn tissue. It’s very selective — so the minute it hits normal tissue that is not burned, it stops dissolving.”
One of the first beneficiaries of this new treatment was Charles Garrison, who suffered severe burns after an incident with his backyard fire pit.
According to local news outlet WANE-TV, Garrison said, “It flashed up, and the gas came out, hit my leg, and I went up like a torch. The pants I was wearing melted, and when I took the pants off that were on fire, the skin slid off the leg.”
Thankfully, what would have been an excruciating, months-long surgical process involving numerous skin grafts is now exponentially accelerated by the application of NexoBrid.
In fact, Garrison’s scars are expected to look as good, or even better, than the ones he would have received from the traditional skin-grafting surgery.
As Dr. Singer said, this new treatment is “basically turning a surgical disease into a medical disease that’s treated at the bedside instead of in the operating room,” Fox reported.
NexoBrid on the whole appears to be a promising treatment, bringing a difficult and painful procedure into the 21st Century.
So far, this treatment promises a whole new world of healing and relief for the millions of people afflicted by severe burns just like Garrison.
Indeed, this story just exemplifies the awe-inspiring capabilities latent within God’s creation.
Who would ever have guessed that the pineapple contained within itself the enzyme that made Garrison’s almost miraculous recovery from his horrific injuries possible?
Of course, this discovery would never have been possible without people being good stewards of God’s creation.
God put animals and plants on this earth for our use, to be sure, but we must be mindful to use those gifts wisely and to preserve them for future generations.
God promises us rewards for following His commandments and responsibly stewarding His creation. When we do that, sometimes, as in the case of this revolutionary new treatment, the rewards are crystal clear.
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