Considering the enormous scale of the global wound dressing market, optimized wound dressings have tremendous market prospects. Chitosan (CS) shows excellent antibacterial and hemostatic activity, and hyaluronic acid (HA) has good biocompatibility, hygroscopicity, and anti-inflammatory activity. For these reasons, both are widely used as wound dressings. In this review, we systematically discuss the characteristics, bioactivities, and commercial wound healing products involving CS and HA. Their limitations, including the low water solubility of CS, instability of HA, and molecular weight (MW)-dependent anti-inflammatory activity of HA, are also outlined. Several chemically modified CS derivatives with enhanced water solubility are discussed. We summarized modified HAs and their stability, finding that mixtures of HAs with different MWs reconcile the opposing effects of low- and high-MW HAs in inflammation and angiogenesis. Moreover, we highlight several types of CS- and HA-based wound dressings, including hydrogels, nanofibers, films, sponges, and scaffolds. Their fabrication and crosslinking methods are introduced in detail, and several limitations of preparation methods and clinical applications are discussed. Finally, we discuss the challenges associated with the clinical translation of wound dressings and possible improvements.
Li et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: