A sticky gel made from the vegetable okra stops bleeding in the injured hearts and livers of dogs and rabbits. This biodegradable bandage could potentially be used in humans if it is shown to be safe and effective.
Bleeding from punctured organs is often stemmed by using sutures, but this can cause inflammation and sometimes a person dies before sutures can be sewn. As a result, gels made from a protein called fibrin are sometimes used to rapidly halt bleeding in surgery, but they are expensive and derived from animals.
狈辞飞,听 at the University of Manitoba in Canada and his colleagues have created a freeze-dried powder from okra juice that forms a gel after contact with blood and rapidly seals injury sites.
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鈥淚 saw my mum cooking okra dishes, which gave me the idea that the sticky juice from the vegetable could be applied to make a bioadhesive,鈥� says Xing.
When the team used the powder to seal roughly 1-centimetre-wide circular wounds in the hearts and livers of dogs and rabbits, bleeding stopped within 1 minute. Substantial bleeding occurred in animals with identical wounds that weren鈥檛 treated with the gel.
鈥淭hough we only monitored the wounds for 2 minutes after applying the gel, without the adhesive, it would typically take up to 20 minutes for clotting to occur in such wounds and by then, the animal or patient would have died,鈥� says Xing.
Imaging of the organs showed that the gel was getting platelets to kick-start blood clotting at the injury site.
鈥淭here are two components, the gel itself forms a physical barrier, but also, it initiates the blood clotting process,鈥� says Xing. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 yet know what component in the okra gel is responsible for the clotting effect, but I think it鈥檚 probably some form of carbohydrate.鈥�
Further experiments in rats suggested that the gel dissolves harmlessly in the body after four to seven weeks, and doesn鈥檛 induce harmful inflammation, says Xing.
The gel is about one hundredth of the price of similar fibrin-based adhesives used in clinics, he adds. The team plans to track longer-term effects of the gel in animals and hopes to test it in humans within roughly three to five years, says Xing.
Because it works in the liver as well as the heart, this technology could potentially be applied in a wide range of clinical settings as well as different tissue types, says at Texas A&M University.
Advanced Healthcare Materials
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