Bhaduri Swayamdipta, Lee Tse-Ang, Peng Jessie, Qureshi Maarig, Gonzales Rueben, Hutter Tanya
Department of Mechanical Engineering, UT Austin.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, UT Austin.
J Appl Polym Sci. 2024 Jun 5;141(21). doi: 10.1002/app.55395. Epub 2024 Mar 6.
Sterilization of devices is important in hospitals, operating theatres, and emergency rooms. Microdialysis allows in vivo sampling of small molecules and is used for clinical studies. Microdialysis probes are made of soft, flexible, porous polymeric membranes. They have been traditionally disinfected using either ethanol (which fails to eliminate all microbes and doesn't satisfy regulatory requirements) or ethylene oxide gas and gamma irradiation (that are expensive and resource-intensive). In this work, three methods for microdialysis probe-sterilization were studied - autoclave and two chemicals (commercially available sterilization solutions): Sporox II and MetriCide. Following sterilization, the regenerated cellulose membranes were characterized under scanning electron microscopy and by measuring the changes in pore characteristics using nitrogen sorption. To determine the effect of sterilization on analyte diffusion through the membrane, microdialysis probes were fabricated, sterilized and tested with two analytes; ethanol and dopamine. The autoclaved membranes suffered thermo-mechanical damage and were deemed unfit for further testing. Probes sterilized with the chemical solutions were subsequently characterized by in vitro microdialysis experiments performed under regulated mass flux conditions. It is concluded that autoclaving is not a suitable sterilization technique for the cellulose membranes, while both of the chemical sterilizers were found to be good candidates for sterilization.
设备的消毒在医院、手术室和急诊室中很重要。微透析允许对小分子进行体内采样，并用于临床研究。微透析探针由柔软、灵活、多孔的聚合物膜制成。传统上，它们要么使用乙醇消毒（乙醇无法消除所有微生物，不符合监管要求），要么使用环氧乙烷气体和伽马射线消毒（这两种方法成本高且资源消耗大）。在这项工作中，研究了三种微透析探针消毒方法——高压灭菌以及两种化学物质（市售消毒溶液）：Sporox II和MetriCide。消毒后，通过扫描电子显微镜对再生纤维素膜进行表征，并使用氮吸附测量孔隙特征的变化。为了确定消毒对分析物通过膜扩散的影响，制作了微透析探针，进行消毒并用两种分析物进行测试；乙醇和多巴胺。高压灭菌的膜遭受了热机械损伤，被认为不适合进一步测试。随后，通过在规定质量通量条件下进行的体外微透析实验，对用化学溶液消毒的探针进行了表征。得出的结论是，高压灭菌不是纤维素膜合适的消毒技术，而两种化学消毒剂都被认为是良好的消毒候选物。
