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Role of the pH on hyaluronan behavior in aqueous solution
Iuliana Gatej1, Marcel Popa, Marguerite Rinaudo
1Centre de Recherches sur les Macromolécules Végétales, CNRS, affiliated to Joseph Fourier University, BP 53, 38041 Grenoble Cedex 9, France.
Abstract:
In this paper, we have examined the behavior of hyaluronan solutions at different pH values. A slight degradation is observed in acidic conditions (pH = 1.6) and basic medium (pH = 12.6) from molecular weight distribution analysis, but the rheological behavior is relatively not influenced much by the pH at the exclusion of two domains: around pH = 2.5, a gel-like behavior is shown and is attributed to cooperative interchain interactions due to the reduction of the polymer net charge and may be the protonation of the acetamido groups; for pH > 12, the decrease of viscosity is mainly attributed to a reduction of the stiffness of the polymeric backbone in alkaline conditions due to the partial breakage of the H-bond network.
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