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Here is a gift link for an article about them in the New York Times from about a year ago.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/well/placenta-donations-b...
TLDR; Its a fantastic substitute for bandages in the sense that you don't need to take off the fish skin everyday. Its also better are retaining moisture in the burn wounds than cotton badages. No need for antibiotics, painkillers etc Its also really cheap. Fish farms regard them as waste.
TLDR; Its a fantastic substitute for bandages in the sense that you don't need to take off the fish skin everyday. Its also better are retaining moisture in the burn wounds than cotton badages. No need for antibiotics, painkillers etc Its also really cheap. Fish farms regard them as waste.
There is an Icelandic company called Kerecis that produces these kinds of fish skin based grafts. There are some videos of some of their patient's before and after over at their webpage[0] but be warned, they might be a bit graphic for some. [0]: https://kerecis.com
> In the US, animal-based skin substitutes require levels of scrutiny from the Food and Drug Administration and animal rights groups that can drive up costs, Lee said. Given the substantial supply of donated human skin, tilapia skin is unlikely to arrive at American hospitals anytime soon. This reminds me of Milton Friedman’s arguments against the FDA.
I wonder what’s the difference between countries that drives that. It’s not like Brazil doesn’t have its own FDA, which is much more strict than the US one, from what I know. Maybe some kind of lobbying? Or are animal rights group that much stronger?
Unless we are talking about pesticides, where Brazil is effectively dumping grounds for substances banned in EU. Every time some pesticide is forbidden in Europe, brazilian regulators are happy allowing local agribusiness import it by the ton in fire sales: https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2025/10/14/export-grade-pois...
TLDR; Its a fantastic substitute for bandages in the sense that you don't need to take off the fish skin everyday. Its also better are retaining moisture in the burn wounds than cotton badages. No need for antibiotics, painkillers etc Its also really cheap. Fish farms regard them as waste.
How expensive is the sterilization process, though? That would be my primary concern if tilapia-skin bandages started to get widely available/mass-produced: that unscrupulous vendors would cut corners during sterilization, and then the burn victims would get nasty infections from remnant bacteria on the tilapia skin.
This has been going for long enough that there's been several metastudies debunking it. Was hyped in the news around 2017. Fish skin or silver sulfadiazine had similar effects and to me are both approximating placebo from the studies I read. The fish does nothing for pain and no difference in the scarring time vs the silver ointments.
fish skin (rich in collagen) sounds like a version of collagen patch. And for collagen patch for example https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3081477/ where despite the "Conclusion" the "Results" show that it helps (and one can also expect that collagen patching is starting point to engineering artificial skin) : Results: With two weeks of treatment, 60% of the ‘collagen group’ wounds and only 42% of the ‘convent…
Will never be approved by the US FDA since it can't be patented.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's special is that tilapia is probably cheaper than even the local fish since it's farmed in massive quantities and shipped all over the world as food. If other fish skins were tried it must have been similar results.
Tilapia imports are heavily restricted to Australia, The live fish will not be allowed, they are considered "restricted noxious fish". The rules are: Illegal to Keep: You cannot keep tilapia (dead or alive), sell them, give them away, or use them as bait. Immediate Euthanasia: Humanely kill the fish as soon as you catch it. Disposal: Bury: Bury them deep and well away from the water's edge to prevent scavengers from…