Investigation of the effect of chestnut honey on healing of corneal wounds: An experimental rat model

Objective: This thesis study aims to investigate the effects of a gel product containing chestnut honey produced in our country on healing of corneal wounds. Material and Methods: The material consisted of 61 female Spraque Dawley rats weighing 200-250 grams, aged 10-12 weeks. Corneal damage was created in a total of 61 eyes in three groups, namely control, chitosan and honey gel. Since the traumatic lesion in the experimental model was in one eye, did not cover the entire eye and was of a size that would not prevent the animals from meeting their physiological needs, a 3 mm diameter corneal wound was created in the left eye of the rats. Thus, the experiment was conducted on 61 eyes of 61 rats. Corneal wounds were measured and recorded in µm2 by marking the perimeter of the lesion with the polygon method using the image processing software program. For histopathology purposes, 4 rats randomly selected from each group were euthanized at 24 and 67 hours. Results: The lowest wound areas were observed in the honey gel group at 24, 36, 48 and 67 hours when corneal wound healing was evaluated. At the 67th hour of the study, most subjects in the honey gel group had completely healed. Conclusion: Honey gel is considered to be a cheap and easy-to-apply alternative to classical treatment in veterinary medicine for corneal wounds. Keywords: Apitherapy, chitosan, corneal healing.