Wound healing potential of forest honey for increasing TGF-β1 protein expression in palatoplasty: In-vivo and In-silico studies

Background: With negative side effects of a lengthy healing time and high complication rate, cleft palate surgery is employed to treat cleft palate, which is a common congenital anomaly. Honey is believed to help accelerate wound healing post-treatment. However, its effect on the increase in the transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 expression after palate surgery is unclear. Objective: This study investigates the effect of forest honey on TGF-β1 protein expression levels in the wound healing palate model. Methods: This study evaluates the TGF-β1 protein expression of a palatoplasty wound model using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. For this purpose, a punch biopsy model with 30 Sprague-Dawley rats is treated with forest honey (TG), Aloclair Gel (PC), and distilled water (NC) for 3 days. Analysis of the TGF-β1 expression on day 4 is performed by statistical one-way analysis of variance and post hoc least significance difference, with a 0.05 significant P-value. Online website software helped to predict the effect of honey components on the TGF-β1 expression. Results: Protein levels of treatment group (T), negative control (NC), and positive control (PC) exhibit mean levels of 16.13 ± 1.06883 ng/L, 7.36 ± 0.16543 ng/L, and 15.03 ± 0.34221 ng/L, respectively. The differential expression T group exhibits a 2.19-fold change in TGF-β1 relative to the NC group and a 1.07-fold change in the PC group (P-value of 0.01). TGF expression in the PC group increases in comparison to that in the NC group by 2.04-fold (P-value of 0.01). In-silico analysis revealed that genistein promotes macrophage proliferation and activation via the increase in the TGF-β1 expression. Conclusion: In summary, forest honey can boost the TGF protein expression via genistein to increase macrophage proliferation and activation.