Formulations with Active Plant Molecules and Additional Therapies in Wound Healing

Chronic wounds are important public health issues, affecting 1.51 to 2.21 per 1000 population. These hard-to-heal wounds affect the workers, due to pain, possibility of infection, amputation, and death, impacting around 2–4% of the health budget of countries. Since ancient times, humans have used plants to treat wounds. Intensive investigation of medicinal plants, their extracts, active molecules and respective formulations begin in the first half of the twentieth century. This review aims to present the definition of wounds and their healing mechanisms; the plants and their molecules with potential to heal wounds; the main developed and patented herbal formulations; additional therapies and future trends in this field. The scientific literature on the subject was investigated in the following databases: Pubmed, Science Direct, Scopus, Lilacs, and Scielo. The Derwent Innovations plataform was used for patent research. The study covered the description of wounds and the wound-healing process, medicinal plants employed in wound healing and active molecules, such as flavonoids, terpenes, polysaccharides, and proteases, along with many types of distinct formulations used to treat wounds, especially gels, creams, ointments and film membranes, and additional therapies that included skin substitutes and grafts, negative pressure wound therapy, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Great advancement has been observed over the main developed and patented herbal formulations based in the Green Chemistry principles. Classical formulations containing active plant molecules are commonly used to treat wounds. However, more sophisticated nanosystems and additional therapies enable important advances in the wound-healing.