ABSTRACT
Chronic wounds represent a silent epidemic that affects a large fraction of the world population and poses a major and gathering threat to public health and the economy (Sen et al. 2009). In the United States alone, chronic wounds affect 6.5 million patients (Crovetti et al. 2004; Singer and Clark 1999). The immense economic and social impact of wounds in our society calls for enhancing our understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying cutaneous wound complications (Sen et al. 2009). Chronic wounds fail to progress through the normal phases of healing, and therefore enter a state of prolonged pathologic inammation (Menke et al. 2007).
