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The antimicrobial activity of silver nanoparticles has been extensively studied in the last years. Such nanoparticles constitute a potential and promising approach for the development of new antimicrobial systems especially due to the fact that several microorganisms are developing resistance to some already existing antimicrobial agents, therefore making antibacterial and antimicrobial studies on alternative materials necessary to overcome this issue. Silver nanoparticle concentration and size are determining factors on the antimicrobial activity of these nano systems. Heparin is a polysaccharide that belongs to the glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) family, molecules formed by a base disaccharide whose components are joined by a glycosidic linkage that is a repeating unit along their structure. It is highly sulfated making it a negatively charged material that is also widely used as an anticoagulant in Medicine because its biocompatibility besides it is also produced within the human body, specifically in the mast cells. Heparin alone possesses antimicrobial activity although it has not been studied very much in detail, it only has been demonstrated that it inhibits E. coli, P. aeruginosa, S. aureus and S. epidermidis, so taking this into account, this study is dedicated to assess UV photochemically-synthesized (λ=254 nm) heparin-based silver nanoparticles antimicrobial activity using the agar disk diffusion method complemented by the broth microdilution method to estimate de minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), that is the lowest concentration at which an antimicrobial will inhibit visible growth of a microorganism. The strains used were the ones aforementioned to assess the antimicrobial activity degree these heparinbased nanoparticles exhibit.
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