Spray me some skin

A "spray-on skin" which coats a wound with a layer of skin cells could help healing, according to US and Canadian researchers. The spray was tested on 228 people with leg ulcers, which are painful open wounds that can last for months. The findings, published in the Lancet, showed that ulcers that have been treated with the spray were more likely to heal and did so more quickly. This new finding shows that medical science is at least getting somewhere, considering leg ulcers are hard to treat. The best treatment, compression bandages, will heal only about 70% of ulcers after six months. Other options include taking skin from elsewhere on the body and grafting it over the wound. But instead of all that, the spray puts a coating of donated skin cells and blood-clotting proteins over the ulcer. This has the potential to vastly improve recovery times and overall recovery from leg ulcers, without any need for a skin graft. This means not only that the patient doesn't acquire a new wound where the graft is taken from, but also that the spray-on solution can be available as soon as it is needed. In contrast, skin grafts take a certain amount of time to prepare, which exposes the patient to further discomfort and risk of infection. In other news, award-winning Romanian pianist (NOT penis) Mihaela Ursuleasa has died at the age of 33. The international musician was found dead in her apartment in Vienna, where she had lived since studying in the Austrian capital.