Morphometric Changes in Rat Periwound Skin During Healing of Excisional Wounds After Exposure to Chronic Social Stress

Background. Chronic stress is the most common systemic factor that negatively affects the body's overall resistance, including wound healing. While many aspects of skin recovery after a surgical wound are well defined, the involvement of cells in the periwound rarea emains unsufficiently studied. Objective. To determine the morphological features of the periwound skin at different stages of the healing process after exposure to chronic social stress. Methods. Chronic social stress was modeled through long-term psychoemotional exposure in Wistar laboratory rats of the experimental group. Animals in both control and experimental groups were wounded in the interscapular area by skin excision. The material of the periwounds was collected on the 1st, 3rd, 7th, 14th and 30th days of wound healing and processed according to standard histological methods. Results. Exposure to chronic social stress led to thinning of the skin layers even before wounding. Visual wound healing was delayed. The main reparative processes by phases (inflammation, proliferation, and remodulation) also occurred with significant delays. Conclusions. Aggressive-dominant social stress is a rather strong damaging factor for susceptible animals, leading to impaired physiological skin regeneration. This was evident in the thinning of skin layers observed in histological samples even before wound application, resulting from reduced proliferation and differentiation processes. The negative consequences of chronic social stress were further manifested in the healing of a surgical wound: the repair processes during the main phases, in particular inflammation and proliferation, were delayed, which ultimately led to the chronicity of reparative regeneration.