Formulation and characterization of palm oil esters based nano-cream for topical delivery of piroxicam.

Abstract

Palm oil esters are high molecular weight esters oil that has been newly synthesized by University Putra Malaysia researchers. It has received a lot of attention for its pharmaceutical and chemical application. Piroxicam is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug with analgesic and antipyretic activity. It has low solubility in water as well as in oil with Log P value of 1.8. Generally, drugs with Log P value of more than 0.5 are needed to be formulated into a modified dosage form. One of these formulations is nano sized cream. Hence, the ability of formulating of these tricky drugs into dispersed system is questionable. The aim of this study is to investigate the ability of palm oil esters to be the oil phase for formulation of piroxicam into O/W nano-cream. Three points were selected from prepared pseudoternary diagram of palm oil esters and different Tween and Span mixtures. Piroxicam solubility and partition coefficient in oil and external phase was detected. Rheological properties, droplet size, structural properties and zeta potential of the dispersion system containing piroxicam were measured. O/W cream was formed with droplet size measurement by TEM of less than 100 nm. It could be concluded that palm oil esters is suitable oil for the formulation of suitable nano-cream containing piroxicam. Keywords: Palm oil esters; Piroxicam Solubility; partition coefficient; Rheology; Surface activity.