Manuka honey microneedles for enhanced wound healing and the prevention of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. - GreenMedInfo Summary
Manuka honey microneedles for enhanced wound healing and the prevention and/or treatment of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) surgical site infection.
Sci Rep. 2020 Aug 6 ;10(1):13229. Epub 2020 Aug 6. PMID: 32764604
Galit H Frydman
Manuka honey (MH) is currently used as a wound treatment and suggested to be effective in Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) elimination. We sought to optimize the synthesis of MH microneedles (MHMs) while maintaining the MH therapeutic effects. MHMs were synthesized using multiple methods and evaluated with in vitro assays. MHMs demonstrated excellent bactericidal activity against MRSA at concentrations ≥ 10% of honey, with vacuum-prepared honey appearing to be the most bactericidal, killing bacterial concentrations as high as 8 × 10 CFU/mL. The wound-healing assay demonstrated that, at concentrations of 0.1%, while the cooked honey had incomplete wound closure, the vacuum-treated honey trended towards faster wound closure. In this study, we demonstrate that the method of MHM synthesis is crucial to maintaining MH properties.We optimized the synthesis of MHMs and demonstrated their potential utility in the treatment of MRSA infections as well as in wound healing. This is the first report of using MH as a substrate for the formation of dissolvable microneedles. This data supports the need for further exploration of thisnew approach in a wound-healing model and opens the door for the future use of MH as a component of microneedle scaffolds.