Reaction of rat's connective tissue to injectable glass-ceramic-chitosan nanocomposite

Background and The use of bioactive glass-ceramics in medicine has been noticed because of their ability in directly connection to bony tissue and bone repairing. Chitosan is also nontoxic material and biologically is compatible with the capability of biodegradation. However, due to the minimally invasive nature of injectable systems and their ability to make scaffold in place of using, they can take the shape of bone defect and eliminate the need for fabricated implants. The aim of this study was evaluation of rat's connective tissue reaction to injectable glass-ceramic-chitosan nanocomposite; it looks to be a good substitute synthetic material in filling bone defects and its production is possible in Iran. In this animal study, 40 rats were divided into 5 groups of 8. Polyethylene tubes filled with glass-ceramic-chitosan nanocomposite as case group and the empty tube as control group were implanted in subcutaneous tissue of rats. Biopsy samples from case and control sites were histologically examined after 7, 15, 30, 60, and 90 days and the number of inflammatory cells and blood vessels were counted. T and analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests were used to examine differences at the significance level of P < 0.05. Overall, no significant differences in severity of inflammation and vessel counts were found between case and control groups on different days (P > 0.05 for all). It seems that injectable glass-ceramic-chitosan nanocomposite was biocompatible.