Analgesic And Wound Healing Effects Of Chitosan And Its Derivative On Scalded Rats

Objective The exposure of the skin and other organs to damaging, or potentially-damaging,’noxious’stimuli elicits the intensely unpleasant sensation of pain. Injury to the skin triggers a cascade of cellular and biochemical events including coagulation and haemostasis phase, inflammatory phase, proliferative phase and remodeling phase, which finally lead to at least partial reconstruction of the wound area. Chitosan and its derivatives have good biological characteristics and been widely studied and applied in many field. In the field of medicine, because of its stopping bleeding, analgesia and promoting healing functions, chitosan and its derivatives can be used as the raw materials of medical dressings, artificial skin and so on. Reports indicated that chitosan and its derivatives have analgesic effect; reason may due to their weak alkaline and will not cause irritation to the wound, however there are few studies on the analgesic effect of chitosan and its derivatives A myriad of studies have suggested that carboxymethyl-chitosan could effectively accelerate wound healing and reduce scar formation.Methods In this paper, tail-flick and hot plate test were performed in rats to explore the analgesic effects of high dose and low dose carboxymethyl-chitosan and rats scald model was established to explore the effects of chitosan and carboxymethyl-chitosan on analgesia and wound healing. The contents of bradykinin (BK) and5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HT) were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The wound skins were taken to quantify the content of hydroxyproline.Results Tail-flick and hot plate test proved carboxymethyl chitosan high and low dose can extend the drift time and paw-licking response latency time of the thermal stimulation in mice(P<0.01). The scald results showed that chitosan and carboxymethyl-chitosan effectively accelerated the wound healing process in burned rats (P<0.05, P<0.05). BK and5-HT contents of carboxymethyl-chitosan group were significantly lower than the control group, at the same time peaked3hours after the injury, explaining the highest degree of analgesia. However the contents of chitosan group compared with control group have no obvious difference. From the hydroxyproline content perspective, it can be perceived that chitosan group and carboxymethyl-chitosan group in the whole process were higher than those in the control group.Conclusion In conclusion, Carboxymethyl chitosan had analgesic effect, and chitosan did not show this effect, but with carboxymethyl chitosan equally it had the function of promoting wound healing.