Design of a new generation wound dressing with pine bark extract

Medical textiles are one of the fastest growing sectors in the technical textile market. Wound dress is one of the significant applications with the largest share in medical textiles. Active molecules doped in the dressings may be therapeutic agents, vitamins, antibiotics, minerals, and growth factors, which contribute to wound healing. Medical plants have a great potential with positive effects in wound care and accelerate the rate of wound healing. Pine bark, which is known to exhibit wound healing properties, is also used in the medical field. The purpose of this study is to design a new wound dressing enriched with Pinus brutia extract. Microwave-assisted extraction which is an environmentally friendly method was carried out at 70℃, 900 W for 10 min to obtain the extracts. Subsequently, P. brutia bark extract was embedded to the alginate gel dressing and characterized and evaluated by in vivo studies on rats. According to the results, the extract was rapidly released from the alginate gel in the first 6 h, whereas the release was slowly increased to 24 h and then reached a steady state. Therefore, P. brutia extract-embedded alginate gel dressings applied for in vivo studies were changed every 24 h, reaching a healing rate of 75.7%, whereas the control group showed a healing rate of 48.6% indicating the superiority of the newly designed wound healing dress enriched with pine bark extract.