Permeability, enhanced skin, transdermal

Transdermal Drug Delivery System with Enhanced Skin Permeability... 

Xu,P, and Chien, Y. W. (1991), Enhanced skin permeability for transdermal drug delivery Physiopathological and physicochemical considerations, Crit. Rev. Ther. Drug Carrier Syst., 8(3), 211-236. 

In order to increase the number of drugs which can be administered transdermally, the barrier function of the skin must be reduced. The kinetic model can be used to assess the role of a penetration enhancer as a function of the physicochemical properties of the drug. In its simplest form a penetration enhancer may be considered to act in one of two ways. Firstly it may increase the permeability of the skin and, secondly, it may additionally modify the partitioning characteristics at the stratum corneum-viable tissue interface. For illustration, two enhancers have been arbitrarily chosen, the first PE1 increases the permeability by a factor of 10, i.e. k- is increased ten fold. The second, PE2, increases k- by a factor of 10 and decreases kg by a similar amount. Thus PE2 additionally reduces the partition coefficient by a factor of 10. The relative effects can be seen by considering two model drug... 

A new generation of transdermal drug delivery (TDD) system was developed to contain one or more skin permeation enhancers in the surface adhesive coating layers. This TDD system has been found, experimentally, to release the enhancers to the surface of stratum corneum to modify the skin s barrier properties, prior to the controlled delivery of the active drug. The extent of enhancement in skin permeability appears to be dependent upon the chemical structure of drug to be delivered transdermally as well as the type and the concentration of enhancer used. The mechanism of skin permeation enhancement have been explored and are analyzed in this report. 

These testosterone systems illustrate two different approaches to solve the problem of inadequate percutaneous absorption rate. In the former case, the patch must be applied to the body s most permeable skin site, the scrotum (which has been shown to be at least five times more permeable than ary other site). In the latter, the difficulty is resolved by creating a transdermal formulation which includes excipients to reduce barrier function. Neither solution is ideal scrotal application is clearly not preferred from a patient compliance standpoint on the other hand, permeation enhancers, by their very nature, tend to be irritating (and the more effective they are, the greater the irritation they provoke). This general problem, which presently limits the application of transdermal delivery, is now discussed in more detail. 

Ultrasound may enhance transdermal transport by inducing skin alteration and active transport (forced convention) in the skin. Various other means of transport enhancement, including chemicals, iontophoresis and electroporation, may enhance transport synergis-tically with US. Thus, the evaluation of the synergistic effect of low-frequency US with chemical enhancers and surfactants for permeation of mannitol revealed that application of US or sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) alone, both for 90 min, increased skin permeability about 8 and 3 times, respectively. However, the combined use of US and a 1% SLS solution increased the skin permeability 200 times to mannitol [129]. 

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