MAKING AN ADHESIVE PLASTER FROM POMEGRANATE SHELL EXTRACT FOR DIABETES MELLITUS (part 1)
1. INTRODUCTION
Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is chronic endocrine metabolic disease, which is a serious threat to human health. It can cause many complications and leads over time to serious damage to the healt, blood vessels, eyes, kidneys and nerves. In diabetic patients, these complications especially affect would healing. Would healing is an ordered process consisting of (1) coagulation (2) inflammation (3) construction/repair and (4) maturation steps. However, this situation changes in diabetic patients an even a would that can heal in a short time does not heal. Wound healing in diabetic patients can be considered stuck at the stage of inflammation. At the stage, the cells responsible for cleaning do not only affect damaged tissues they also damaged healthly tissues around it. Therefore, increased and prolonged inflammation also damages the surrounding tissues and newly made wound repairs tissues. Also, the rate of epithelialization decreases the due to the circulatory system and blood vessels which are damaged by diabetes, and thus wound healing enters a vicious circlr. There are different types of diabetes. Based on the latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO); especially in the pat three decades, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes has risen dramatically in countries of all income levels. Again according to the data of the WHO; it is known that approximately 422 million people worldwide have diabetes and 1.6 million deaths are linked to diabetes each year. The increased prevalence and number of cases of DM, which has not yet been found of treatment, is a serious threat to health. Undoubtedly, the high risk of diabetes is wounded with ulcers, which are caused by damaged blood vessels and tissues that do not heal and are constantly infected. Especially because of their characteristic benefits and medicinal value, medicinal plants are gaining importance worldwide in the last years. Also, medicinal plants are gaining global importance because of their easy availability, lower cost compared to synthetic drugs and low side effects. In recent years, due to its antioxidant and polyphenol content, various studies makes on the effect of pomegranate plant on wounds. Pomegranate is an important research subject, especially in diabetes because of increasing the rate of epithelialization by increasing the effect of hydroxyproline in injured tissues also ensuring that the high antioxidant content in its content copes with the oxidative stress situation in diabetic patients. For these reasons, it is thought that pomegranate may be the main product for many medical and biotecnological studıes, especially diabetes treatment. The idea that perhaps the most important feature of such a product is must be antibacterial is the basis of this study. Pomegranate is a fruit known since ancient times. It can be consumed fresh, as well as processed, such as fruit juice, wine, jam. It also uses in traditional methods, which has been used among the people for centruies. Pomegranate cultivation is done in Turkey since ancient times, but its development in the fruit growing industry has been in the 2000s. According to the Turkey Statistics Organization’s data in 2019; in our country, there has been in the a 40% incerase in pomegranate production in the last 5 years.
In addition, approximately 1/3 of our pomegranate production is exported. Pomegranate is consists of many different anatomical parts such as pomegranate juice, shell, seed, flower, leaf, oil, pomegranate trees shell and root (Borgese and Massini 2007, Rozenberg and friends 2006). All these different parts have different pharmacological properties. Previous studies with Staphylococcus epidermidis and Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria have revealed antibacterial effect of pomegranate juice and this antibacterial effect has been based on phenolic compounds, pigments and citric acid in pomegranate juice. In another study; pomegranate shell was used and antifungal effect has been observed against Candida albicans. In addition, pomegranate juice was used in an antiviral effect study and it has been observed that pomegranate juice could prevent the entry of HIV-1 virus into the cell. This effect has been thought to be caused by the tannins which pomegranate juice contains in high rate (Megan 2010). Pomegranate shell, which is very rich in phenolic compounds, constitutes approximately 50% of the fruit. Phenolic compounds have important effects on human health due to its antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-carcinogenic, anti-inflammatory, antiviral and antiallergic properties. In particular, pomegranate shell extract has approximately 10 times more phenolic content than other pomegranate parts. Therefore, in this study, it was firstly aimed to investigate the antibacterial effect of pomegranate shells.
In the light of the preliminary information presented; In the first stage of our study that is aimed to measuring the antibacterial effect of pomegranate shell; pomegranate shells that waste occurs by pomegranate processing has been brought from Turkey Osmaniye. Their shape, colour and weight evaluated then they re-heated at the optimum conditions for remove liquids after that again dry weight measurements evaluated.
At the next stage; pomegranate shells ground with a muller and Retsch brand PM100 grinder and Soxhlet method has been applied to obtain extract and HPLC was applied for gallic acid measurement. After reaching the desired peak value in the HPLC process, antibacterial tests have been performed with tetracycline antibiotic on Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilise bacteria by using disc diffusion method as the last step. In addition to the antibacterial test; antifungal test also has been performed using Candida albicans by the same method. As a result of all these tests, it has been observed that pomegranate shell extract has an antifungal effect with high dose usage and has a high antibacterial effect, especially in gram negative bacteria.
In this study has been aimed to be a ground work for easy-to-reach, low-cost and effective studies to be developed especially in the fields of medical and biotechnological and it was aimed to develop a adhesive plaster containing pomegranate fruit extract that increases the healing of wounds and tissue damages that have difficulty healing, especially in diabetic wounds.
