Differential cell death programmes induced by silver dressings in vitro

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D Van Den Plas, K De Smet, D Lens & P Sollie
“In past decades the gold standard for topical burn treatment was the use of silver sulfadiazine. Due to toxicity caused by the silver, the cream base itself, or a combination of both negatively influencing the wound healing process, the healthcare industry searched for alternatives. Although these have been reported to be a significant improvement, the dressings still show residual cytotoxicity.”

A comparative study of the cytotoxicity of silver-based dressings in monolayer cell, tissue explant & animal models

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A Burd, C Kwok, S Hung, H Chan, H Gu, Wai K Lam & L Huang
“Over the past decade, a variety of advanced silver-based dressings have been developed. There are considerable variations in the structure, composition, and silver content of these new preparations. In the present study, we examined five comercially available silver-based dressings (Acticoat™, Aquacel® Ag, Contreet® Foam, PolyMem® Silver , Urgotul® SSD). We assessed their cytotoxicity in a monolayer cell culture, a tissue plant culture model, and a mouse excisional wound model.”

In vitro cytotoxicity of silver

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V Poon & A Bird
“The results show that silver is highly toxic to both keratinocytes and fibroblasts in monolayer culture. When using optimized and individualized culture the fibroblasts appear to be more sensitive to silver than keratinocytes. However, when both cell types were grown in the same medium their viability was the same. Using tissue culture models again indicated an ’environmental effect’ with decreased sensitivity of the cells to the cytotoxic effects of the silver. Nevertheless in these studies the toxic dose of skin cells ranging from 7×10−4 to 55 × 10−4% was similar to that of bacteria. These results suggest that consideration of the cytotoxic effects of silver and silver-based products should be taken when deciding on dressings for specific wound care strategies. This is important when using keratinocyte culture, in situ, which is playing an increasing role in contemporary wound and burn care.”