Staff listing in the Advanced Materials and Healthcare Technologies Division
Madeline Berrow
Postgraduate Research Student,
Contact
Research Summary
Analysing chlorhexidine penetration through skin to optimise delivery to infected tissues.
Supervisors: Felicity de Cogan (https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/pharmacy/people/felicity.decogan), David Scurr (https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/pharmacy/people/david.scurr).
My research explores the skin permeation of chlorhexidine, a common additive of surgical hand washes, surgical site and instrument sanitisers and for skin antisepsis pre-catheter implementation, to underpin its potential as a topical antiseptic for treating skin infections, including deep tissue infections. Optimising tissue permeation of chlorhexidine could offer an alternative therapy to treat 'difficult-to-treat' infections that would normally involve administration of strong antibiotics or antifungals, or in some cases, surgical removal of infected tissue.
My research involves test stripping native and chlorhexidine-treated human skin to:
- examine efficacy of the topical antiseptic by culturing remaining bacteria from skin samples
- characterise skin sections using ToF-SIMS allowing quantification of chlorhexidine permeation depth