Nosebleeds are one of the most frequent ENT emergencies worldwide. It is estimated that 60% of the world’s population will experience a nosebleed at least once in their lifetime, although only 6-10% will seek medical attention. There are several methods for treating a nosebleed, and one of the most popular ones with a high success rate is nasal packing. However, the choice of the most appropriate nasal plug is vital to the outcome of the treatment. The ideal nasal plug should promote hemostasis and be comfortable for the patient, thus reducing damage to the nasal passages.
Edorta Santos-Vizcaíno, a researcher in the NanoBioCel group and one of the authors of the work, pointed out the joint work by the UPV/EHU’s NanoBioCel and BIOMAT groups have shown that by-products from the food industry are a valuable, sustainable source of biomaterials that can be used to make safe, effective nasal plugs with excellent hemostatic properties.
“Using natural by-products of the food industry –soy protein and chitin– we developed a scaffold or spongy matrix that displays a series of very interesting physicochemical properties: it is capable of absorbing huge quantities of water or blood, it has a large surface area to bind and house cells inside it, it does not produce any kind of rejection against the material and, what is more, it partially degrades,” said the UPV/EHU researcher.
Chitin is the basis of this new structure, i.e., the skeleton of the spongy material. At the same time, the soy protein is responsible for lining the structure to make the material highly biocompatible and, in turn, able to absorb large amounts of blood. In short, “our material produced from food industry waste displayed superior mechanical and hemostatic properties compared with Merocel®,” concluded Edorta Santos. Research staff from both research groups agree that this work, carried out from a circular economy approach, demonstrates that a green strategy can be adopted to manufacture nasal plugs using upgraded by-products from the food industry; their hemostatic properties are even better than the gold standard in the clinical setting. Researchers are currently in the process of applying for a European patent and trying to find a company that is interested in the product with a view to bringing the idea to fruition and willing to commit itself to this technology based on the concept of the circular economy.