Buccal and Sublingual Drug Delivery

A buccal delivery system is meant to deliver the drug from the mucosa in the oral cavity in a unidirectional fashion towards systemic circulation. A study carried out to test the mucoadhesiveness of a chitosan formulation on the buccal cells revealed that the formulation remained wedged into the buccal cells for at least one hour [121]. 

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To understand the mechanism of action of permeation enhancers, the routes by which drugs are absorbed first need to be considered. Chapter 9 reviews the basic biopharmaceutics of buccal and sublingual drug delivery, so only a very brief discussion of this in the context of permeation enhancement will be given below. 

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