Bacterial
infections are a hurdle to the application of medical
devices, and in the United States alone, more than one million infection
cases are reported annually from indwelling medical devices. Infections
not only affect the function of medical devices but also risk the
lives and health of patients. Nitric oxide (NO) has been used as an
antibacterial therapy that kills bacteria without causing resistance
and provides many therapeutic effects such as anti-inflammation, antithrombosis,
and angiogenesis. Silicone oils have been widely utilized in manufacturing
consumer goods, healthcare products, and medical products. Specifically,
liquid silicone oils are used as a medical lubricant that creates
lubricated interfaces between medical devices and the exterior physiological
environment to improve the performance of medical devices. Herein,
we report the first primary S-nitrosothiol-based
NO-releasing silicone oil (RSNO-Si) that exhibits proactive antibacterial
effects. S-nitrosothiol silicone oils (RSNO-Si) were
synthesized and the NO payloads ranged from 34.0 to 603.9 μM.
The increased NO payload induced higher-viscosity RSNO-Si oils, as
RSNO0.1-Si, RSNO0.5-Si, and RSNO1-Si had viscosities of 12.8 ±
0.1 cP, 32.0 ± 0.2 cP, and 35.1 ± 0.3 cP, respectively.
RSNO-Si-SR interfaces were fabricated by infusing silicone rubber
(SR) in RSNO-Si oil, and the resulting RSNO-Si-SR disks demonstrated
NO release without NO donor leaching. RSNO0.1-Si-SR, RSNO0.5-Si-SR,
and RSNO1-Si-SR exhibited maximum NO flux at 0.8, 6.5, and 21.5 ×
10 –10 mol cm–2 min–1 in 24 h, respectively. RSNO-Si-SR disks also demonstrated 97.45,
95.40, and 96.08% of inhibition against S. aureus in a 4 h bacterial adhesion assay. Considering the easy synthesis,
simple fabrication of non-leaching NO-releasing interfaces, tunable
payloads, NO flux levels, and antimicrobial effects, RSNO-Si oils
exhibited their potential use as platform chemicals for creating antimicrobial
medical device surfaces and other antibacterial materials.