Wound healing activity of cream formulation containing tomato juice in guinea-pig: Development of measurement analysis and its application

The wound-healing activity of several active substances in tomato fruit, including ascorbic acid, carotenoids, flavonoids, and ferulic acid, has been proven. Presently, the wound-healing activity of tomato juice cream was measured using a newly developed calculation approach. Three cream formulations were prepared, namely F1, F2, and F3, distinguished by different juice concentrations of 20%, 25%, and 30%, respectively. The main components of the cream base are water, stearic acid, glycerin, cetyl alcohol, and triethanolamine. The wound-healing activity of these formulations was tested on injured guinea pig skin. Wounds were made at 6 points on each guinea pig skin to which 3 tests and 2 control formulations were applied, while the last wound was given nothing as a sick control (SC). The control formulation included negative control (F0, the cream base without tomato juice) and positive control (F+, Betadine® ointment). Two parameters of wound-healing were proposed, including inflammation-proliferation transition time (iptt) and rate constant of wound closure (k). The results of the physical characterization of creams indicated that tomato juice concentration significantly affected thespreadability (p<0.05), whereas other properties, including emulsion type, pH, and adhesivity, were similar for all formulations. The iptt (days) of SC, F0, F1, F2, F3, and F+ were 7.1, 7.1, 7.0, 6.8, 6.8, 6.0, respectively, while the k (%/day) values were 42.7, 39.4, 56.0, 59.0, 66.0, 39.1, respectively. Therefore, it can be concluded that based on the rate constant of wound closure, the wound-healing activity order from the best to the worst was F3, F2, F1, which was higher than the market formulation.