IIT-M invention to aid diabetic patients

The invention will prove greatly useful in the treatment of chronic non-healing wounds in diabetics which still pose a mjaor challenge.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras has invented a way to treat wounds in diabetic patients that do not heal rapidly, even causing amputation in extreme cases. The new method uses graphenexide-loaded nanocomposite scaffolds to treat both normal and diabetic wounds.

The invention will prove greatly useful in the treatment of chronic non-healing wounds in diabetis, which still pose a major clinical challenge. Though some commercially available wound dressings do focus on diabetic wounds, they are very expensive. As the diabetic population in India keeps growing, treating these wounds is a major clinical and social challenge.

Speaking about the method, Prof. Vignesh Muthuvijayan of IIT Madras said, “We wanted to exploit graphene-based materials’ ability to improve blood vessel formation at certain concentrations to prepare an inexpensive wound dressing. The psylliumreduced graphene oxide nanocomposite that we created has shown exciting results in animal studies.”

A convex lens was used to focus sunlight on graphene oxide to obtain reduced graphene oxide. These reduced graphene oxide dispersions were loaded into a plant carbohydrate polymer (psyllium) solution to obtain wound dressing scaffolds. Diabetic wounds treated with the dressings healed in 20 days, compared to 26 days for wounds treated using other methods.