Vancomycin is increasingly being used as a topical antibiotic in orthopeadics because of the development of methicillin resistance in bacterial strains. But formation of antibacterially inactive crystalline degradation products (CDP-1s) and their gradual releaseing from carriers in exceeding concentration of the active form of Vancomycin (factor B) were verified.
We know that the factor B and CDP-1s are released from polymethylmethacrylate to a much lower level than bone grafts. Therefore, the aim of our study was to demonstrate the effect of polymerization on the formation of CDP-1s.
The active form of Vancomycin and CDP-1s was released from bone grafts at temperature of 80oC at almost the same levels, as bone grafts with vancomycin at temperature of 37oC. Levels of the factor B released from polymethylmethacrylate was in minimal concentration after 9 days.
Based on our experiment we not confirmed effect of higher temperature on greater production of CDP-1s. Reason of lower levels of vancomycin released from the bone cement is due to the fact that most antibiotics are embedded within the material, and therefore releases only a small portion of vancomycin from the carrier surface.