Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Polylactic acid (PLA) and its copolymers have good biocompatibility and biodegradability, because of good physico-mechanical properties and good thermal forming properties, as well as final degradation product is H2O and CO2, PLA has been widely studied and applied in tissue engineering and drug delivery areas.
OBJECTIVE: Although the PLA and its copolymers have been studied and applied in tissue engineering and drug delivery area of sustained-release preparations. This study aims to investigate the application as a scaffold and a drug carrier material in bone defects caused by bone tuberculosis through reviewing the documents.
METHODS: A computer-based online search of Medline database (1993-01/2010-06) and CNKI Database was performed using the key words of “Tissue engineering, drug delivery, sustained release degradation, lactic acid, glycolic acid, bone tuberculosis” in English and in Chinese.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: A total of 157 documents were screened out. Repetitive research was excluded, after reading titles and abstracts, 31 literatures were included in analysis. PLA and its copolymers as bone tissue engineering scaffolds are conducive to the growth of osteocytes, and are superior to traditional materials of bone repair. As a drug carrier, they sustained-release degrade in vivo to play the best efficacy, can reduce the toxicity of drugs to the body especially liver and kidney. But few studies report its role as both a scaffold and a drug carrier.