Biomedical textiles with therapeutic effects: Development of berberine containing chitosan microcapsules

Biomedical textile is one of the potential aspects that many researchers are concentrating on. Applying the biomedical agents into textile materials is suggested to provide the therapeutic effects to heal the human aliments and promote the well-beings. The use of polymeric microcapsules to encapsulate the therapeutic drugs is believed to be helpful in protecting the liable drugs from the external environments. There is a great potential to introduce the drug containing microcapsules to textile materials for the development of biomedical textiles with therapeutic functions. In this study, berberine containing chitosan microcapsules were produced and then grafted onto the cotton fabrics in order to develop the biomedical textiles with antibacterial property. The surface morphology and the chemical components of microcapsules were evaluated by the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) analysis. The mean drug loading efficiency of berberine containing chitosan microcapsules was demonstrated to be 71.81%. The particle size of microcapsules was ranging from 21.62 urn to 56.75 urn with the mean particle size of 36.41μm. In vitro release study revealed that there was approximately 70% of berberine release from the microcapsules. The antibacterial assessment also showed that the berberine containing chitosan microcapsules on cotton fabrics improved the growth inhibition of Staphylococcus aureus when compared with the free drug.