Abstract
The COVID-19 global pandemic, as well as the widespread persistence of influenza and the common cold, create the need for new medical devices such as nasal sprays to prevent viral infection and transmission. Carrageenan, a sulfated polysaccharide, has a broad, non-pharmacological antiviral capacity, however it performs poorly in two key areas; spray coverage and mucoadhesion. Therefore gellan, another polysaccharide, was investigated as an excipient to improve these properties. It was found that viscoelastic relaxation time was the key predictor of spray coverage, and by reducing this value from 2.5 to 0.25 s, a mix of gellan and carrageenan gave more than four times the coverage of carrageenan alone (p < 0.0001). Gellan also demonstrated enhanced adhesion to a mucus analog that increased significantly with time (p < 0.0001), suggesting the development of specific gellan–mucin interactions. This property was conferred to carrageenan on mixing the two polymers. Together, this data suggests that gellan is a promising excipient to improve both sprayability and mucoadhesion of carrageenan for use in antiviral nasal sprays.
Highlights
The spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused over a quarter of a billion cases of COVID-19 worldwide, leading to more than 2.7 million deaths, as of 26th March 2021 [1]
It was found that viscoelastic relaxation time was the key predictor of spray coverage, and by reducing this value from 2.5 to 0.25 s, a mix of gellan and carrageenan gave more than four times the coverage of carrageenan alone (p < 0.0001)
We investigate gellan (Figure 2B), another food and pharmaceutical grade polysaccharide, as an excipient to improve the relatively poor performance of the antiviral carrageenan in two key areas: sprayability and mucoadhesion
Summary
The spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused over a quarter of a billion cases of COVID-19 worldwide, leading to more than 2.7 million deaths, as of 26th March 2021 [1]. While transmission of viruses is complex, with multiple potential pathways including direct contact (person-to-person transmission) and indirect contact (transmission through contaminated objects), airborne transmission is thought to be the predominant route. A new strain, it seems to follow a similar, airborne, mechanism of transmission as the SARS-CoV-1 virus in the early 2000s [2], as well as other respiratory viruses [3]. Droplets containing infective viral loads can travel up to 250 m before hitting the ground, depending on droplet size, velocity, and air flow, with spreading in poorly ventilated indoor areas thought to be the most prevalent [8, 9].
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