LAUSR

Wound bleeding and infection are one of the major threats to patients' lives, but developing safe materials with high hemostasis efficiency and antibacterial activity remains a major challenge. Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are suitable as antibacterial agents in hemostatic process, but the application is limited due to easy accumulation of toxicity. Herein, thiol-modified chitosan (TMC) was prepared by modifying with mercaptosuccinic acid, and then used to immobilize AgNPs to obtain composite sponges (TMC/AgNPs) for stemming the bleeding and preventing infection. TMC/AgNPs sponges had complex interlaced tubular porous structure with high porosity (99.42%), indicating high absorption. TMC had high immobilization efficiency for AgNPs, the release rate of AgNPs was 14.35% after 14 days, but TMC/AgNPs sponge still had excellent antibacterial activity against S. aureus, E. coli and P. aeruginosa. In vitro and in vivo experiments confirm that TMC/AgNPs sponge had fast and efficient hemostatic performance in comparison with PVF sponge, and its possible mechanism was the synergistic effect of high blood absorption capacity and the interaction between amino, sulfydryl and blood cells. Furthermore, TMC/AgNPs sponge can promote wound healing by preventing wound infection, while PVF sponge cannot. More importantly, the sponges had good safety due to the immobilization of TMC for AgNPs.