Formulation and evaluation of galantamine gel as drug reservoir in transdermal patch delivery system.

Woo Fong Yen,Mansor Ahmad,Maznah Ismail,Mahiran Basri

doi:10.1155/2015/495271

Abstract

Galantamine hydrobromide is formulated in tablets and capsules prescribed through oral delivery for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. However, oral delivery of drugs can cause severe side effects such as nausea, vomiting, and gastrointestinal disturbance. Transdermal delivery of galantamine hydrobromide could avoid these unwanted side effects. In this work, galantamine hydrobromide was formulated in gel drug reservoir which was then fabricated in the transdermal patch. The in vitro drug release studies revealed that the drug release from the donor chamber to receptor chamber of Franz diffusion cell was affected by the amount of polymer, amount of neutralizer, amount of drug, types of permeation enhancer, and amount of permeation enhancer. Visual observations of the gels showed that all formulated gels are translucent, homogeneous, smooth, and stable. These gels have pH in the suitable range for skin. The gel also showed high drug content uniformity. Hence, this formulation can be further used in the preparation of transdermal patch drug delivery system.

Highlights

Galantamine hydrobromide is a tertiary alkaloid, which is isolated from various plant species such as Narcissus and Lycoris species
These results suggested that galantamine hydrobromide was uniformly distributed in the carbopol gels and the loss of drug during formulation processes was insignificant
The gel drug reservoirs were successfully prepared by adding galantamine hydrobromide in the gels

Summary

Introduction

Galantamine hydrobromide is a tertiary alkaloid, which is isolated from various plant species such as Narcissus and Lycoris species. It is useful in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease by inhibiting the activities of acetylcholinesterase enzyme. This prevents the breakdown of neurotransmitter, acetylcholine. Galantamine hydrobromide has advantages such as lower muscarinic side effects and higher speed of recovery from respiratory depression, can penetrate through the blood-brain barrier, can bind to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, and enhanced microglial amyloid-beta peptides phagocytosis [4,5,6]. Scheme 1 shows the chemical structure of galantamine hydrobromide [7]

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion