RESEARCH ARTICLE
A Hydroxypropyl Chitosan (HPCH) Based Medical Device Prevents Fungal Infections: Evidences from an In Vitro Human Nail Model
Anna Bulgheroni*, Linda Frisenda, Alessandro Subissi, Federico Mailland
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2015Volume: 9
First Page: 4
Last Page: 9
Publisher ID: TODJ-9-4
DOI: 10.2174/1874372201509010004
Article History:
Received Date: 26/01/2015Revision Received Date: 14/05/2015
Acceptance Date: 15/05/2015
Electronic publication date: 10/7/2015
Collection year: 2015
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
A long lasting, protective and film forming HPCH-based medical device was developed and tested in a novel human nail infection model. HPCH-treated and untreated human distal fingernail fragments were disposed on the culture surface of or . After incubation for one or three weeks, the fragments were collected and histological analysis was performed. Results obtained in untreated nails evidenced, as expected, that the fungal invasion was different depending on the species: it was completed with spp., partial with sp. and limited to the surface with sp.. On the other hand, HPCH-treated nails were not invaded by fungal elements, neither dermatophytes nor moulds or yeasts. Besides showing the barrier effect of HPCH this paper describes a novel model of nail infection that is simple, reproducible and closely represents the human situation.
