(Unila): Diabetic Ulcer is one of the diseases caused by diabetes mellitus (DM). It is usually caused by repeated pressure (shear and pressure) on the foot with complications related to diabetes mellitus from peripheral neuropathy or peripheral arterial disease and its healing is often complicated by the development of infection.
Diabetes mellitus itself is a chronic metabolic disease characterized by increased blood glucose (or blood sugar) levels, which over time causes serious damage to the heart, blood vessels, eyes, kidneys, and nerves. DM causes long-term complications including microvascular problems (kidney and eye damage), and macrovascular (such as myocardial infarction and stroke).
Serious complications in DM can also result in diabetic ulcer conditions as explained above. According to the report of the International Diabetes Federation in 2021, Indonesia ranked fifth in the world with diabetes cases reaching 19.4 million people in total. This has motivated Unila students to do research and innovations with respect to DM.
The students from the Medical Faculty and those from Mathematics and Natural Sciences made a group known as the Pined Patch team and they were guided by a lecturer, Ihsanti Dwi Rahayu. The research investigated the extraction of pineapple skin waste which is believed beneficial for health and for the diabetic ulcer treatment.
There are several steps to make hydrogel patch products. The team first started surveying, collecting, sorting, cleaning and drying the pineapple skin wastes, and then conducting determination test, refining pineapple skin simplicia, undergoing maceration process, filtering and evaporating the pineapple skin extract, carrying out phytochemical test, checking blood sugar, weighing alloxan, and finally testing pH of formulation.
Reported from the Instagram account @pined_patch, the research results offered by the PKM-RE team use pineapple skin waste as the main ingredient in making medicine.
According to the data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), Lampung Province is the largest pineapple product in Indonesia with a production volume of 861,706 tons. However, the majority of population generally consume pineapple flesh regardless of the benefit of the pineapple stems and skins which are commonly considered as wastes.
As a matter of fact, pineapple skin wastes contain compounds that are efficacious and potentially good for health.
The compounds of pineapple skins contain carbonic acid, carotenoids, alkaloids, terpenoids, flavonoids, tannins, bromelain, coumarin, and saponins all of which have properties as antioxidants, anticancer, antihypertensive, anti-inflammatory, antidepressants, and antidiabetics. As reported, hydrogel patches from pineapple extracts are scarce. [PR Team]
