Desenvolvimento de biofilme comestível com potencial aplicação em feridas de pets

Abstract

Skin lesions can cause serious harm to the animal organism, especially when treatment fails to prevent secondary bacterial infections. The difficulty in establishing efficient protocols for wound healing, coupled with the indiscriminate use of drugs in veterinary medicine, has become a serious public health problem. In this sense, the first chapter of this work addressed a literature review seeking to elucidate skin infections and the properties of Curcuma longa L. and Mentha piperita as potential phytotherapeutic agents for the treatment of these wounds. To this end, qualitative bibliographic research was carried out using recognized scientific databases. Scientific works published in the last 15 years were considered. After the bibliographic survey, the plants Curcuma longa and Mentha piperita proved to be promising healing agents due to their structure containing active principles such as flavonoids, triterpenes, alkaloids, and biomolecules that can act in various phases of the wound healing process. Given this, there is a need for further research into alternative methods of inoculating medicinal plants into film-forming matrices for anti-inflammatory and antibacterial use, acting as adjuvants in the healing process. Chapter 2 presents the results of an experiment conducted to obtain a thermoplastic starch-based biofilm formulation incorporating Curcuma longa L. and Mentha piperita as potential phytotherapeutic agents to act as wound healers. To this end, powders were produced from the chosen medicinal plants. A biofilm was produced by incorporating turmeric and mint into polymeric matrices. Subsequently, the biofilms were characterized in terms of appearance, thickness, mechanical properties, moisture absorption (MA) and solubility (SW), water vapor sorption, surface and cross-sectional morphology, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Then, they were evaluated for antimicrobial capacity against pathogens of interest (Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas spp., Escherichia coli, Enterobacter spp., and Proteus spp.). It was possible to produce a biofilm with good visual appearance, minimal air bubbles, transparency, homogeneity, and flexibility. Furthermore, parameters such as thickness, tensile strength, and elongation percentage yielded satisfactory results, forming a high-quality biofilm. SEM images showed that starch biofilms with turmeric and mint have a porous structure and multilayer dispersion ideal for wound dressings, favoring absorption, controlled release, and therapeutic properties. For TGA, the higher the concentration of compounds attributed to the film, the greater the temperature changes. Factors such as the low solubility and bioavailability of turmeric should be considered to produce biofilms containing this natural compound. Therefore, future studies should consider ways to enhance the action of these bioactive compounds. A possible alternative is the use of more concentrated powders, using only the compounds present in these plants with known antimicrobial action.