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| Author(s): |
Ana Paula Rodrigues
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Faculdade de Engenharia Química |
| Defense date: | 2008-02-07 |
| Examining board members: |
Angela Maria Moraes;
Marcelino Luiz Gimenes;
Adriano Rodrigues Azzoni;
José Alberto Fracassi da Silva;
Leila Peres
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| Advisor: | Angela Maria Moraes |
| Abstract | |
Polymeric membranes developed to treat cutaneous or internal lesions can be constituted by several types of polymers, being chitosan and alginate frequently employed for this purpose. While chitosan is a deacetylated derivative of chitin, alginate is a natural linear polysaccharide obtained from seaweed. Both polysaccharides are nontoxic, biodegradable and biocompatible, and in addition, show healing properties. In this way, the production of chitosan-alginate membranes designed to be used on lesion terapy, as wound dressings, is particularly relevant. In this context, this work focused the development of a reproducible and easy to scale up methodology to prepare and characterize chitosan-alginate membranes (containing or not bacitracin). Different controlled conditions of flow rate and stirring rate were employed during the mixture of both polysaccharides. In addition, the effects of glycerol utilization on chitosan-alginate membrane characteristics, as well as the comparison of the properties of the obtained membranes to those of membranes containing only of chitosan, was performed. The membranes were characterized regarding thickness, maximum uptake capacity of different aqueous solutions, water drainage ability, percentage of mass loss when stored in water and in other solvents, tensile strength and strain at break, permeability to water vapor and oxygen, effectiveness of protection against bacterial permeation, bacitracin incorporation efficiency, morphology before and after exposure to bacitracin, formation of inhibition zone before and after bacitracin incorporation and in vivo performance. The results obtained showed that glycerol-free chitosan-alginate membranes, able to absorb around 19.2 g H2O/g membrane, with water drainage ability up to 14,343 g/m2-day, tensile strength around 30 MPa, effective against bacterial penetration, with water vapor permeability around 2,678 g/m2-day, bacitracin incorporation up to 25% and adequate performance in vivo can be obtained by the proposed procedure, suggesting that the chitosan-alginate membranes obtained in this work have good potential to be used as temporary dressings on lesions terapy (AU) | |