| abstract |
A wound dressing having anti-infective activity. The wound dressing provides stable and improved formulations of precursors required in generating anti-infective iodine specifically within a wound site where the oxygen tension may be very low. Furthermore, the design of the invention precludes interference by catalase (and other heme proteins) in competing for hydrogen peroxide where hydrogen peroxide is used as a component of the iodine generating formulation, ensuring more efficient and sustained production of free iodine as a potent anti-infective agent. The invention takes advantage of the physical design of the wound dressing, and the permeation of the body fluid into the dressing, which together serve to initiate formation of nascent iodine concomitant with placement of the dressing into, or over, a wound site. The invention circumvents the problem of trapping elemental iodine in the form of tri-iodide, which lacks microbicidal activity, by the chemical method of generating iodine de novo, and in the presence of excess oxidant. Newly formed iodine is thus able to egress and disperse throughout the wound site before there is an opportunity for it to become fully bound as tri-iodide, conferring to the wound site anti-infective activity. Two embodiments of the wound dressing invention are described comprising a mono- and bilayer configuration which, when placed in a wound site, confer to the site anti-infective properties. |