Incidences with chronic wounds among the elderly and patients with diabetes mellitus are increasing annualy. Complications related with the chronic wounds include huge economical costs of the healthcare systems and heavy bacterial colonization which result in limb amputation, sepsis and ultimately death. Antibacterial polyurethane foams have been prepared for treatment of cutaneous infections by using different strategies, such as incorporation of quaternary ammonium, imidazolium or pyrrolidonium cationic groups and physiosorption of silver-based nanoparticles. However, the polyurethane foams with incorporated cationic groups can act on contact-killing principle, while the foams prepared by silver nanoparticles physiosorption are characterized by loss of antimicrobial properties due to their leaching over time. Therefore, polyurethane foams with covalently grafted nanoparticles for sustained release over the time of application are expected to possess superior properties over the physically linked counterparts. In this work we synthesized polyurethane foams by dispersing lyophilized antibacterial Ag-lignin nanoparticles in the polyol-containing pre-foam solution. Lignin, which was used as a silver reducing and nanoparticle capping agent in this formulation, is underutilized waste material from many industries and was used as an additive to polyurethane formulations due to its high polyphenol content, reactive towards the isocyanates. The prepared polyurethane foams were shown to possess broad antibacterial activity against gram-positive and gram-negative bacterial strains. The foams revealed sustained release behaviour over time which is prerequisite for effective eradication of broad spectrum of bacterial strains in the bacteria-divergent chronic wound microflora.

Antibacterial polyurethane foam with incorporated lignin-capped silver nanoparticles for chronic wound treatment

2019 Spring National Meeting

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