Pimples are pests, but when a pimple accelerates into a skin disease called Buruli ulcer, that's another story.
First there's a growing welt, then the skin sloughs off in sheets, exposing the red, fleshy muscles and pearly white bones beneath. It won't be painful, at least not until the patients' arms have to be amputated and they are rendered disabled.
Buruli ulcer is not a problem in the United States, but it has become an endemic in parts of Africa, Australia, China, Peru and Mexico.
Now two ASU professors are out to change that.
Geochemistry research professor Lynda Williams and assistant microbiology professor Shelley Haydel are studying the healing potential of two green clays to heal Buruli ulcer lesions.
"This is the first time anyone has tried to scientifically validate why clays heal," Williams said. "People have observed that clays help heal certain wounds and infections for many years. No one has ever understood why."
A family, led by their mother, Line Brunet de Courssou, discovered the two clays in France and has been using them to heal wounds for years on the Ivory Coast.
The family documented more than 50 success stories with the clay but could not secure funding due to the lack of a scientific study.
Williams stumbled upon this story through e-mails from the Clay Minerals Society listserv. After the second e-mail, she began investigating the clays.
Haydel brought her expertise as a microbiologist to the table, and the two secured a $438,970 grant from the National Institutes of Health to pursue the project.
Buruli ulcer disease is caused by a bacterium related to leprosy and tuberculosis called Mycobacterium ulcerans.
While the two scientists are not sure how people contract the disease, they said the bacterium has two effects.
First, it produces a toxin that inhibits the immune system from responding. This causes the wound to be
painless and allows the infection to progress, Haydel said.
Second, it destroys the fat tissue under the skin. The skin eventually falls off, leaving behind gaping holes of pink tissue.
What Haydel and Williams have discovered so far is that one of the green clays promotes the growth of bacteria, while the second stops it from growing.
This observation might indicate that the first clay accelerates normal skin bacteria growth to such proportions that it jumpstarts the immune system or inhibits the immunosuppressant toxin, Haydel said.
People who have used the clay in the Ivory Coast have said the first half of treatment hurts like childbirth, Williams said, which could indicate the immune system's response.
After the first clay is washed off, the second clay is applied, which kills bacteria and allows new skin tissue to grow.
In the end, there are scars, but the resulting tissue is relatively supple and certainly beats amputation or deformities, Williams said.
Williams and Haydel are testing multiple hypotheses as to why the clays function in this manner.
They said they hope the research will result in a topical medication that can be produced cheaply and distributed to Third World countries.
Other applications for use in the U.S. may include acne treatment, they said.
"We can envision a lot of applications in this," Haydel said. "This is all about what ASU wants to do with its biomedical research. It's multidisciplinary and translates to public use."
Reach the reporter at Annalyn.Censky@asu.edu.
