Polysaccharide-modified bactericidal and fouling-resistant cotton gauze for potential application as a wound dressing

Abstract

Wound infections significantly delays the healing of wounds resulting in increased morbidity, discomfort, cost, and even mortality. An ideal antibacterial wound dressing should prevent bacterial growth on the surface of the wound as well as the dressing and simultaneously prevent fouling for retaining its antibacterial activity. To achieve this, the fabrication of an antibacterial wound dressing by the modification of the cotton gauze is reported here. Cotton gauze was modified using either N-[(2-hydroxy-3-trimethylammonium) propyl] chitosan chloride (HTCC), a bactericidal polycationic derivative of chitosan, or a combination of HTCC and dextran, via a simple immersion coating method involving electrostatic immobilization. This coating method is aqueous-based, scalable, and does not require any pre-treatment of cotton. The best HTCC-modified gauze sample demonstrated ∼99% reduction in the bacterial count when immersed in bacterial suspension for 2 hours. While the bactericidal efficacy of gauze modified with both HTCC and dextran was reduced to 90%, it exhibited fouling-resistant activity and could prevent biofilm formation as well. In addition, the modified cotton gauzes also showed good breathability, good moisture absorption and retention, and was non-cytotoxic to fibroblast cells. Thus, this work demonstrates a facile strategy to convert the inert gauze to an active bactericidal and fouling-resistant one for potential management of wound infections.

Keywords

• Antibacterial
• antifouling
• chitosan
• dextran
• wound dressing