A model for studying cutaneous wound healing and resilience to aging: Ear punch biopsy in old mice.

Resilience to aging is a biological event that precedes age-related decline in physiological function and is defined as an organism's ability to respond to physical stress with increasing age. There is a need to identify factors that may predict resilience for enhancing and maintaining healthy aging. Older people often experience delayed wound healing beause of compromised tissue repair and immune response. Therefore preclincal models may be of value to investigate the relationship between cutaneous wound healing and resilience to aging. This brief report descibes an ear punch biopsy model of cutaneous wound healing in aging mice and shows that mice with biopsy ear wounds that heal more quickly have better cognition, increased strength and better running endurance later in life.