Pig Tissue Healing Human Wounds

Researchers using pig tissue to help heal human wounds
One in 20 people will need some kind of tissue transplant in their lifetime. Some researchers believe pigs may be the key to faster healing from transplants.

Reporter: Maureen McFadden

One in 20 people will need some kind of tissue transplant in their lifetime. Some researchers believe pigs may be the key to faster healing from transplants.

From hernias to plastic surgery, pig tissue is helping humans get back in the game.

"I was having pain even standing for an extended period of time," says hernia patient Chris Nelson.

Chris had a hernia in his groin; the muscle had torn. Instead of using donor tissue, doctors repaired it with material made from the small intestines of pigs.

"It did seem almost weird science or something like that," Chris says.

"Pigs have been a very popular or common animal to use," says Dr. Samer Mattar, bariatric surgeon at Clarian Bariatrics in Indianapolis. "Believe it or not, their genetic makeup is pretty close to humans."

When placed on the torn tissue, the body uses the pig part as a scaffold or guide to remodel and repair itself. Over time, the pig's tissue is replaced by human tissue, providing a permanent repair. Read More

Our ability to utilize livestock as a resource has undoubtedly led to many improvements in the quality of human life. Many things that we use and take for granted every day are a co-product of livestock production. This is another great example of that. Using tissue from pigs to help heal humans may seem like a fairly insignificant breakthrough. However, it’s just one in a long line of uses for pigs in human medicine. Without livestock production we would have hungry people and more sick people. That isn’t the legacy we want to leave for our future generations.