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Abstract
Essential oils are natural products with a complex composition. Terpenes are the most common class of chemical compounds present in essential oils. Terpenes and the essential oils containing them are widely used and investigated by their pharmacological properties and permeation-enhancing ability. However, many terpenes and essential oils are sensitive to environmental conditions, undergoing volatilization and chemical degradation. In order to overcome the chemical instability of some isolated terpenes and essential oils, the encapsulation of these compounds in nanostructured systems (polymeric, lipidic, or molecular complexes) has been employed. In addition, nanoencapsulation can be of interest for pharmaceutical applications due to its capacity to improve the bioavailability and allow the controlled release of drugs. Topical drug administration is a convenient and non-invasive administration route for both local and systemic drug delivery. The present review focuses on describing the current status of research concerning nanostructured delivery systems containing isolated terpenes and/or essential oils designed for topical administration and on discussing the use of terpenes and essential oils either for their biological activities or as permeation enhancers in pharmaceutic formulations.
Highlights
Essential oils (EO) are natural products extracted by hydrodistillation from plant materials, composed by small, volatile, and fairly hydrophobic molecules [1,2,3]
The findings indicated that the optimal amount of terpenes in formulations should be 1% (v/v), and the formulation containing 1% of cineole alone led to higher permeation of the drug to deeper layers of the skin compared to mixtures of the three terpenes in varied proportions and limonene and citral alone [68,69,70]
The interest in the development of nanostructured systems containing essential oils and terpenes designed for topical administration routes has been rising in recent years
Summary
Essential oils (EO) are natural products extracted by hydrodistillation from plant materials, composed by small, volatile, and fairly hydrophobic molecules [1,2,3]. When applied to the skin, a drug delivery system can be considered dermal (when the targeting site of the drug is the skin) or transdermal (when the drug needs to pass through skin layers in order to reach its target); for mucosal tissue administration, delivery can be mucosal and transmucosal [18] Many issues concerning these delivery routes are described in the literature, such as the resistance to diffusion through the skin and mucosae when aiming towards transdermal or transmucosal delivery and the reduced contact of the formulation with mucosal tissues due to mucus and, reduced drug bioavailability [19,20]. Encapsulation of essential oils in micro or nanometric systems is an interesting strategy to provide better stability to the volatile compounds and protect them against environmental factors that may cause chemical degradation [2,6]. The present review intends to assess the panorama of research using nanostructured delivery systems containing essential oils and/or their isolated terpenes/terpenoids as bioactive compounds and/or excipients for topical administration routes
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