Speleotherapy – modern bio-medical perspectives

Speleotherapy – a special form of climatotherapy – uses certain conditions specific to caves and salt-mines to treat several medical conditions, especially respiratory and skin-related. This reduces all types of irritations and therefore disease symptoms are mitigated or fully suppressed while the patient is accommodated into the salt-mine. Objective: Influence of microclimate in salt-mines of Turda, Dej and Cacica on morphology and electrophoretic expression of in vitro lung and skin fibroblasts acquired from the lung and hypodermic tissues of Wistar rats, in normal conditions and after ovalbumin-induced asthma, respectively after experimental injuries and burns. Materials and methods: skin fibroblast cultures acquired from lung and hypodermic tissue sampled from Wistar rats. Cultures acquired are developed in fibroblast monolayer attached to the culture dish. Wistar rats with weight between 75 -100 g were divided in three groups: one control group, one group with experimental asthma, one group with injuries and burns. 10 animals from each group were sent to salt-mines in Turda, Dej and Cacica for 14 days and kept in a saline environment, similar to speleotherapy. Results: Speleotherapy applied to Wistar rats determined significant differences in cellular morphology and in electrophoretic expression of lung and skin fibroblasts from primary cultures. Conclusions: Results of this survey indicates that speleotherapy induces changes in morphology and protein expression of in vitro lung and skin fibroblasts, and these changes support the therapeutic effects of speleotherapy.