Wound bleeding and infection are two 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 the hemostatic process, but the application is hampered because of easy accumulation of toxicity. Herein, thiol-modified chitosan (TMC) was prepared by modifying with mercaptosuccinic acid and then was 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 the TMC/AgNPs sponge still had excellent antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In vitro and in vivo experiments confirm that the TMC/AgNPs sponge had fast and efficient hemostatic performance in comparison with the 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, the TMC/AgNPs sponge can promote wound healing by preventing wound infection, while the PVF sponge cannot. More importantly, the sponges had good safety due to the immobilization of TMC for AgNPs.
Keywords: antibacterial activity; chitosan; hemostasis; silver nanoparticles; thiol-modified.