Investigation of the in vitro antibacterial, cytotoxic and in vivo analgesic effects of silver nanoparticles coated with Centella asiatica plant extract

Abstract

In recent years, researchers have shown an increased interest in using medicinal plants for the synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) having various therapeutic properties. Centella asiatica (CA), a medicinal plant, has been used to treat minor burn wounds, psoriasis, and hypertrophic wounds among many other pathological conditions. The current study aimed to synthesize CA coated AgNPs (CA-AgNPs) with appropriate biocompatibility and various therapeutic properties, including antimicrobial and analgesic activities. The synthesized CA-AgNPs were characterized by ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy, zeta potential measurements, and fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. The formation of spherical CA-AgNPs was confirmed by a single surface plasmon resonance (SPR) peak emerging at 420 nm wavelength by UV-Vis. The average hydrodynamic diameter and zeta potential of the particles were found to be 29.5 nm and -24.5 mV, respectively. The FT-IR analyses showed that the AgNPs were coated and stabilized by bioactive compounds from the CA extract. MTT cytotoxicity assay revealed that CA-AgNPs at ≤1 mM concentrations exhibited biocompatibility for L929 fibroblast cells. The antimicrobial activity of CA-AgNPs was confirmed by significant inhibition of Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. In addition, the analgesic effect of CA-AgNPs was investigated for the first time in the literature by tail-flick and hot plate methods, and statistically significant results were obtained for both methods. Taken together, these results suggest that CA-AgNPs can be used as an effective antibacterial and analgesic agent in a variety of biomedical applications, including coating wound dressings.

Keywords

• Analgesic effect
• antibacterial effect
• Centella asiatica
• cytotoxicity
• silver nanoparticles

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