Designing tragacanth gum based sterile hydrogel by radiation method for use in drug delivery and wound dressing applications

• Radiation formed wounds dressings are sterile and biocompatible.
• Hydrogel dressings are mucoadhesive in nature.
• These dressings showed permeability to gases and impermeable to microorganism.
• Drug release occurred through non-Fickian diffusion mechanism.
• Drug release profile was best fitted in Hixson-Crowell model.

Present article discusses synthesis and characterization of the sterile and pure hydrogel wound dressings which were prepared through radiation method by using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), tragacanth gum (TG) and sodium alginate (SA). The polymer films were characterized by SEM, Cryo-SEM, FTIR, solid state C13 NMR and XRD, TGA, and DSC. Some important biological properties such as O2 permeability, water vapor transmission rate, microbial permeability, haemolysis, thrombogenic behavior, antioxidant activity, bio-adhesion and mechanical properties were also studied. The hydrogel film showed thrombogenicity (82.43 ± 1.54%), haemolysis (0.83 ± 0.09%), oxygen permeability (6.433 ± 0.058 mg/L) and water vapor permeability (197.39 ± 25.34 g/m2/day). Hydrogel films were found biocompatible and impermeable to microbes. The release of antibiotic drug moxifloxacin occurred through non-Fickian mechanism and release profile was best fitted in Hixson-Crowell model for drug release. Overall, these results indicate the suitability of these hydrogels in wound dressing applications.