Curcumin nanoparticles (curc-np) inhibit in vitro growth of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa in dose-dependent fashion, and inhibits MRSA growth and enhances wound healing in an in vivo murine wound model, new research in the journal Nanomedicine shows. Curc-np may represent a novel topical antimicrobial and wound healing adjuvant for infected burn wounds and other cutaneous injuries.
For the study, curcumin was encapsulated into a silane-hydrogel nanoparticle vehicle (curc-np). Native curcumin's has poor solubility, but it has been an object of investigation for its innate antimicrobial and wound healing properties.
Study co-author Adam Friedman, MD Assistant Professor of Dermatology and Director of Dermatologic research at the Montefiore-Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told the publication Nanowerk, "There has been tremendous excitement regarding curcumin in multiple fields of medicine, most prominently in Oncology. Here, for the first time, we demonstrated that curcumin nanoparticles were more effective at both accelerating thermal burn wound closure and clearing infection with Methicillin Resistant S. aureus (MRSA) as compared to curcumin in its bulk size." Nanowerk's full report here.