Flexible and micro-porous chitosan hydrogel/nano ZnO composite bandages for wound dressing: In vitro & in vivo evaluation

Wound infection is the major difficulty in the field of wound care management because such infections can cause exudate formation, delay the wound healing, facilitate improper collagen deposition etc. Microbes are the major reason for infection and the prevalence of the same is high in around us. The major infection causing bacteria were Staphylococcus aureus (S.aureus) and Escherichia coli (E. coli). Once entered to the body, these microbes grow immediately and start to form colonies. The microbes can easily be entered to the body through the wounds and can reach to deeper portions of the tissue and further can lead to internal infection.

The remedy for above mentioned harms would be the use of wound dressing with

antibacterial activity.Hydrogel based wound dressings would be helpful to provide cooling sensation, moisture environment and act as barrier to microbes. To overcome these hassles, they have developed flexible and micro-porous chitosan hydrogel/nano zinc oxide composite bandage (CZB) by the incorporation zinc oxide nanoparticles (nZnO) into chitosan hydrogel.

Swelling, degradation, blood clotting, antibacterial, cytocompatibility, cell attachment on the material and cell infiltration into the composite bandages were evaluated. The nanocomposite bandage showed enhanced swelling, blood clotting and antibacterial activity. Cytocompatibility of the composite bandage has been analyzed in normal human dermal fibroblast cells. Cell attachment and infiltration studies showed that the cells were found attached on to the nanocomposite bandages and penetrated into the interior. Further, the in vivo evaluations in sprague-dawley rats revealed that, these nanocomposite bandages enhanced the wound healing and helped for faster reepithelialization and collagen deposition. The obtained data strongly encourage the use of these composite bandages for burn wound, chronic wound and diabetic foot ulcers.

Flexible and micro-porous chitosan hydrogel/nano ZnO composite bandages for wound dressing: In vitro & in vivo evaluation

P.T. Sudheesh Kumar, Vinoth Kumar Lakshmanan, T.V. Anilkumar, C. Ramya,

P. Reshmi, A.G. Unnikrishnan, Shantikumar V. Nair, and Jayakumar Rangasamy

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