Abstract

A topical wound dressing system containing ciprofloxacin was designed through the fabrication of two hydrogels by coupling gelatin with ethyl vanillin and its composite with polyvinyl alcohol using electron beam irradiation. The composite hydrogel films were loaded with ciprofloxacin by the equilibrium swelling method and its release was investigated in various mediums. The influence of factors affecting the loading and release of the drug as well as the morphology and chemical structure of hydrogels were considered. The amount of drug released from composite hydrogels to simulated wound fluid was more than that in pH of 2.2 solution. The loaded drug on the composite hydrogels was slowly released in the simulated wound fluid medium; thus, about 90 of it was released in 19.5 h. The kinetics and mechanism of ciprofloxacin release from composite hydrogels in different media followed the Higuchi or Korsmeyer�Peppas model and non-Fickian diffusion mechanism, respectively. The cytotoxicity analyses verified the non-toxicity of the synthesized hydrogels. Also, for loaded composite hydrogels, acceptable growth inhibition was observed toward Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli bacteria. Based on these results, the synthesized hydrogels seem to be useful for the fabrication of antibacterial polymeric wound dressing with slow drug release of up to 19.5 h. Graphical abstract: Figure not available: see fulltext. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.