Association of Berberine into hydrogel as drug delivery system

Abstract

Hydrogels are hydrophilic polymer networks having the capacity to absorb water, ranging from about twenty to thousand times their dry weight. Berberine (BS) is a natural product, a quaternary ammonium salt from the group of isoquinoline alkaloids found in medicinal plants as Berberis Vulgaris. It has been reported that BS has some activity against and has already been used to treat dysentery, hypertension, inflammation, and liver disease in China and Japan. In this work, berberine was used as a model drug to study the its association with different types of hydrogel of Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA 10%); gellan gum (GG 2%) and gellan gum‐PVA crosslinked with cysteine (cys) (GG2%PVA2%2%cys) preparations. Parameters such as fraction of retained water (Wf); hydration percentage (%H); Swelling (DSw) and time course profile (t=100%) (TC) were evaluated.The results showed that the GG2%PVA2%cis was able to retain more water and swelling than the other preparations. The time course of release of the BS to the medium was greater for GG2%PVA2%cys making it a candidate to drug delivery studies in biological assays. Supported by FAPDF, CAPES, CNPq, FINATEC and DPP‐UnB.