Abstract
Due to its antimicrobial properties, silver has been used in many areas of medicine and today silver nanoparticles have been incorporated into different biomaterials. The objective of this study was to implement a simple method for the incorporation of silver nanoparticles in polymethyl methacrylate substrates, to determine their mechanical properties, antimicrobial functionality and the solubility of silver incorporated. Using this approach an antimicrobial material can be obtained; the surface of a commercial polymethyl methacrylate (Opti-cryl®) was impregnated with silver nanoparticles (AgNps) using a spray deposition method (0.03% by weight). The antimicrobial activity of the material was evaluated using the Japanese industrial standard (JIS Z 2801) against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. Inductively coupled plasma optical spectrometry (ICP-OES) was used to measure the solubility of the incorporated silver nanoparticles. Mechanical tests of flexural strength were performed to observe changes in mechanical properties. The antimicrobial results show that PMMA / AgNps has significant antimicrobial activity, showing better results for Escherichia coli. ICP-OES analysis suggests low solubility in silver nanoparticles. Mechanical tests showed a 1.6% increase in flexural strength for PMMA added with silver nanoparticles. The method presented for incorporating silver nanoparticles into PMMA and producing an acrylic antimicrobial substrate is easy and has the advantage of improving its mechanical properties.
Highlights
Due to its antimicrobial properties, against Gram-positive and negative bacteria, silver nanoparticles are good candidates to be used in different areas of medicine and odontology [1]
Mechanical tests The flexural strength of the samples PMMA/AgNps and the neat PMMA was calculated in a universal mechanical testing machine (Shimadzu AGI)
As we can see values the antimicrobial activity of the PMMA/AgNps samples against both strains were similar to the copper samples, for PMMA/AgNps the R values were 1.89 (Staphylococcus aureus) and 3.33 (Escherichia coli) that correspond to CFUs reductions in 99 % and 99.9 %, respectively
Summary
Due to its antimicrobial properties, against Gram-positive and negative bacteria, silver nanoparticles are good candidates to be used in different areas of medicine and odontology [1]. The application of AgNps in medicine and dentistry materials has been encouraged due to they exhibit a broad-spectrum antimicrobial effect and because they do not lead to the development of resistant bacterial strain [2]. For that reason, they are been widely studied in medical areas, such as in wound sutures, endotracheal tubes, surgical instruments and bone prosthesis [3]. The antimicrobial functionality of dental materials could avoid or decrease their microbial colonization and increase and improve oral health levels and life quality [5] This fact will open a lot of applications in several areas such as endodontic, dental prosthesis, implantology, and restorative dentistry [3]. MTT (3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide) tetrazolium reduction assay was done for measuring the results of bacterial proliferation
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