Acrylic hydrogels modified with bee pollen for biomedical applications

Abstract

The focus of this paper is to present the effect of bee pollen on the structure and properties of acrylic hydrogels, often used as materials for wound dressings. Honey, propolis and bee pollen have been very well known for their extraordinary healing and medical properties for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans have reportedly used bee pollen as a drug, especially for a number of skin diseases and lesions. Acrylic hydrogels are, on the other hand, rather recently discovered materials used for novel wound dressings. The idea of our research was to combine a synthetic polymer matrix with bee pollen, in order to obtain innovative materials which could be used as wound dressings exhibiting new properties. The obtained acrylic hydrogels containing bee pollen were investigated towards swelling ability in distilled water and different fluids, including pseudo-extracellular fluid, simulated body fluid and Ringer’s solution. Moreover, incubation in water and simulated body fluids (SBF) and Ringer’s solution was carried out. The morphologies of bee pollen and obtained acrylic hydrogels modified with bee pollen were characterized by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The chemical structure of the polymer matrix was confirmed by ATR-FT-IR spectra.