The Use of Natural Biopolymer of Chitosan as Biodegradable Beads for Local Antibiotic Delivery: Release Studies

Background: chitosan is a naturally occurring biopolymer which has been widely used in a variety of biomedical applications includinglocal antibiotic delivery due to its excellent mechanical properties, biodegradability and biocompatibility. beads are spherical, porous carrierswhich are prepared from various materials including chitosan. objectives: the current study aimed to fabricate a new controlled delivery system for local anti-infective treatment and to study its releasebehavior. materials and methods: twenty beads were prepared from 1% or 2% chitosan solutions and immersed in vancomycin (vm) or teicoplanin (tn)solutions. the antibiotic release kinetics was determined by linear regression analysis supposing first order kinetics. results: immersion for 3 h resulted in significant increase in the total tn release that differed from 0.5 h of immersion, except for the 1% beadsimmersed in vm. increasing the chitosan concentration significantly increased the total release and antibiotic load of beads. the release oftn was more delayed compared to that of vm, which allowed a gradual release beyond 3 days. the half-life (mean ± sem) of both types of tncontainingbeads was significantly extended for 3 h immersion in comparison to 0.5 h immersion (26.1 ± 5.9 vs 10.9 ± 1.0 and 17.0 ± 2.1 vs 5.1 ±1.9; p < 0.001). however, neither increasing the chitosan concentration, nor immersion time did result in any significant increase in the releaseof vm. conclusions: the current study demonstrated an improved control of tn release impregnated in beads. it can be concluded that chitosanbeads might be considered as a novel carrier for tn delivery to infected bone for local anti-infective therapy.