Current
wound scaffold dressing constructs can facilitate wound healing but do not exhibit antibacterial activity, resulting in high
infection rates. We aimed to endow
wound scaffold dressing with anti-infective ability by polyhexamethylenebiguanide (PHMB). We prepared PHMB
hydrogel at varying concentrations (0.25%, 0.5%, 1%, 2%) and assessed release and cytotoxicity. PHMB
hydrogel was added to the
wound scaffold dressing to generate a PHMB
hydrogel-modified
wound scaffold dressing. Wound healing and
infection prevention were evaluated using a full-thickness skin defect model in rats. In vitro, the
hydrogel PHMB release time positively correlated with PHMB concentration, with 1% allowing sufficiently long release time to encompass the high-incidence period (3-5 days) of
infection following
wound scaffold dressing implantation. Implantation of 1% PHMB
hydrogel into the skin did not cause adverse responses. in vitro cytotoxicity assays showed the PHMB
hydrogel-modified
wound scaffold dressing did not significantly affect proliferation of fibroblasts or vascular endothelial cells, 99.90% vs 99.84% for fibroblasts and 100.21% vs 99.28% for vascular endothelial cells at 21 days.
Transplantation of PHMB
hydrogel-modified
wound scaffold dressing/unmodified
wound scaffold dressing on the non-infected
wounds of rats yielded no significant difference in relative vascularization rate, 47.40 vs 50.87 per view at 21 days, whereas bacterial content of the
wound tissue in the PHMB
hydrogel-modified
wound scaffold dressing group was significantly lower than the unmodified
wound scaffold dressing group, (1.80 ± 0.35) × 103 vs (9.34 ± 0.45) × 103 at 14 days. Prevalence of persistent
wound infection in the rats receiving PHMB
hydrogel-modified
wound scaffold dressing
transplantation onto infected
wounds was significantly lower than the unmodified
wound scaffold dressing group, 30% vs 100%. PHMB
hydrogel-modified
wound scaffold dressing exhibited suitable antibacterial ability, and its biological activity did not significantly differ from that of the unmodified
wound scaffold dressing, thereby allowing it to effectively prevent
infection following
wound scaffold dressing implantation.