Suture marks on injuries fade away with time. There was an era, however, when these stitches would have to be cut after the injury healed. But for injuries to the bone, there are only two options: a cast for minor fractures, and implants like metal rods for more serious injuries.
Now, a team of scientists from Bengaluru’s Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has developed an alternative: a bone reconstruction method similar to sutures. What they are using is an unlikely ingredient: maltitol, derived from maltose, a sweetening agent found in most sugar-free foods such as ice-creams.
Maltitol is combined with other components to make long chain-like structures that become plastic. This is then used to fill in the bone gap caused by fracture, instead of the traditional rod. “But maltitol also reacts to water. And as the body is primarily made of water, the bonds start breaking slowly, over a course of time. The molecules are soluble in water, and they eventually come out,” says Kaushik Chatterjee, Assistant Professor, Department of Materials Engineering, IISc. In other words, once the bone grows back, the structure simply disintegrates.
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Prof. Chatterjee worked on the idea along with Giridhar Madras, Professor, Chemical Engineering Department, IISc and Janeni Natarajan, Ph.D student in the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, IISc. “This material would be a huge advantage over existing ones, such as metal rods, which do not allow growth of the bone, especially in infants and adolescents,” he added.
Advantages
Alternatives to maltitol were too soft to be used for bone reconstruction. The advantage of using maltitol to make the scaffold or structure to be implanted in the bone is that drugs can then be injected into it to hasten healing. The other alternative is to wrap a protein layer around the structure before it is implanted into the bone,” said Prof. Chatterjee who is still conducting research on this.
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Low side effects
The other benefit of using maltitol is fewer side-effects, Prof. Chatterjee said. Though the side-effects of direct consumption are still debatable, he said the implant in the body would not be “terribly harmful.” This process is still being tested in the lab.