The onset of
infections associated to bacterial proliferation and biofilm formation on indwelling medical devices represents the major risk of morbidity and mortality among patients. In order to contain the risk of
infections in clinical practice, there is a growing interest nowadays in
silver-based products due to the strong antimicrobial efficacy of
silver against a broad spectrum of microorganisms. In this work, temporary
catheters for haemodialysis were coated with
silver nano-particles through the in situ photo-reduction of a
silver salt in alcoholic
solution. A homogeneous distribution of
silver particles firmly bonded to the substrate was obtained through the adopted technique. An optimisation study was required to define the amount of
silver, in order to obtain good efficacy against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria and no cytotoxic effect. At this purpose, three concentrations of
silver, 0.1, 0.25 and 0.5 wt%, have been deposited and tested with respect to bacterial reduction percentage and cellular response. Particularly, bacterial enumeration on Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus, and
BrdU incorporation, TUNEL assay and Actin staining on a selected primary cell population were performed on
catheters treated with the different
silver solutions. The
silver percentages tested demonstrated strong antibacterial properties together with a good cellular response, thus indicating that the developed product could be proposed in clinical practice and that the lower percentage tested can be preferred with evident advantages in terms of costs.