The team used a laser to create minor wounds in 31 volunteers. Over the following week they took skin biopsies of the wound to identify where new skin cells had grown. Before wounding, there were few new cells in the eccrine glands, which help regulate temperature, but four days later there were plenty. This suggests that the glands contain a reservoir of adult stem cells that can be recruited to repair wounds. Humans have three times more eccrine glands than hair follicles, making them the major contributor to new skin cells.

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But Laure Rittié from the University of Michigan Medical School and colleagues have shown that a type of sweat gland not found in animals also plays a role.

HUMANS have evolved a sweaty way to repair skin wounds.

It was thought that the body repairs wounds such as bed sores and burns by generating new skin cells from hair follicles or the skin at the edges of the wound – the same way that other animals do.

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The finding is “unexpected and against current dogma”, says Elaine Fuchs from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland. Rittié says the work has “taken the first step to identifying new therapies in wound healing”.