Facile and Robust Antibacterial Functionalization of Medical Cotton Gauze with Gallic Acids to Accelerate Wound Healing

Abstract

The clinical treatment of wounds with medical cotton gauze often encounters inflammation and excessive immune response triggered by bacterial infections, which can significantly prolong the wound healing process. It is, therefore, of great significance to develop functional gauzes with broad-spectrum antibacterial and anti-inflammatory activities. Herein, we report a convenient, robust, and practical strategy to functionalize medical cotton gauze by covalently immobilizing plant-derived gallic acids. The obtained GA@Gauze exhibits not only excellent biosafety and washing durability but also broad-spectrum bacterial antiadhesion and bactericidal activities. More importantly, in vivo experiments confirm that GA@Gauze can effectively reduce the bacterial invasion and regulate inflammatory responses, resulting in faster production of collagen fibers and accelerated wound healing. Therefore, this simple and powerful route has great potential for fabricating the next-generation functional gauzes for clinical treatment of wounds.