Gelatin

Uses

Gelatin is used for weight loss and for treating osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and brittle bones (osteoporosis). Some people also use it for strengthening bones, joints, and fingernails. Gelatin is also used for improving hair condition and to shorten the recovery after exercise and sports-related injury . Gelatin is used in preparations of foods, cosmetics, and medicine .

Plasma volume expander in hypovolaemic shock . Haemostatic .

Gelatin-based hydrogels are being used in drug delivery and tissue engineering because they are able to promote cell adhesion and proliferation. In addition, these hydrogels can be used as wound dressings because of their attractive fluid absorbance properties. Manufacturing technologies such as ultraviolet stereolithography and two-photon polymerization can be used to prepare structures containing photosensitive gelatin-based hydrogels .

Gelatin is also used to associated treatment for these conditions: Hypovolaemia, Acute Normovolemic Hemodilution, Plasma Volume Replacement

How Gelatin works

It works as a hemostatic by providing a physical framework within which clotting may occur .

As a volume expander, gelatin remains in the vascular space. When used in the treatment of hypovolaemia gelatin can produce a significant increase in blood volume, cardiac output, stroke volume, blood pressure, urinary output and oxygen delivery, increasing volume and pressure .

For intravascular volume expansion, the majority or gelatins produce an effect which is almost equivalent to of which are mild, although severe reactions albumin, with a duration of action of 3 to 4 hours to have been reported .

Gelatin or collagen chains suspended in solution can be covalently cross-linked to form matrices that are able to swell in the presence of aqueous solutions, forming what are called gelatin hydrogels. Hydrogels, characterized by their hydrophilicity and insolubility in water, have the capability of swelling into an equilibrium volume while maintaining their shape. The chemical cross-linkers used may be either small bifunctional molecules or polyfunctional macromolecules, for example, glutaraldehyde .

Toxicity

LD50 Rat >3750 mg/kg .

Gelatin solutions have shown to increase the risk of anaphylaxis and may be harmful by increasing mortality, renal failure, and bleeding likely due to extravascular uptake and impairment of coagulation. .

Gelatin can cause an unpleasant taste, a sensation of abdominal heaviness, bloating, heartburn, as well as belching .

Using gelatin as a plasma expander appears to have no significant advantages over crystalloids or isotonic albumin on mortality and may have a slightly higher risk of requiring allogeneic blood transfusion in perioperative and critically ill patients.

A meta-analysis found that using gelatin as a volume expander in vivo has no significant advantages over currently used volume expanders such as isotonic albumin or crystalloids and may slightly increase the risk of requiring a blood transfusion .

Food Interaction

Elimination Route

The bioavailability of gelatin was indirectly studied by the determining the bioavailability of total hydroxyproline in gelatin using a pharmacokinetic method after oral ingestion in rats.

The relative and absolute bioavailability of gelatin were 74.12% and 85.97%, respectively. The amino acid profile of plasma showed that 41.91% of the digested gelatin was absorbed from the intestine in the peptide form, and there was a linear correlation between the absorbed amount of an amino acid and its content in gelatin (R(2) = 0.9566). Furthermore, 17 types of collagen peptide were purified by multi-step chromatography and identified with ultra-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionisation-mass spectrometry .

Half Life

Half-life is about 4 hr .

Clearance

A large percentage of the administered dose is removed by the kidneys within 24h of ingestion .

Innovators Monograph

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