Chitosan finishing nonwoven textiles loaded with silver and iodide for antibacterial wound dressing applications

Polyethylene terephtalate (PET) and Polypropylene (PP) textiles are widely used in biomedical application such as wound dressings and implants. The aim of this work was to develop an antibacterial chitosan (CHT) coating activated by silver or by iodine. Chitosan was immobilized onto PET and PP supports using citric acid (CTR) as a crosslinking agent through a pad-dry-cure textile finishing process. Interestingly, depending on the CHT/CTR molar ratio, two different systems were obtained: rich in cationic ammonium groups when the CTR concentration was 1%w/v, and rich in anionic carboxylate groups when the CTR concentration was 10%w/v. As a consequence, such samples could be selectively loaded with iodine and silver nitrate, respectively.Both types of coatings were analyzed using SEM and FTIR, their sorption capacities were evaluated toward iodide/iodate anions (I(-)/IO3(-)) and the silver cations (Ag(+)) were evaluated using elemental analysis. Finally, in vitro evaluations were carried out to evaluate the cytocompatibility on the epithelial cell line. The silver loaded textile reported a stronger antibacterial effect against E.coli (5 log10 reduction) than toward S. aureus (3 log10) while the antibacterial effect of the iodide loaded textiles was limited to 1 log10 to 2 log10 on both strains.