Polysorbate enhanced progesterone loaded drug diffusion from macromolecular fibrous patches for applications in obstetrics and gynaecology

Abstract

Progesterone, a steroidal hormone, is used as pharmacotherapy in the clinical practice of obstetrics and gynaecology. There are however considerable bioavailability issues with the currently available formulation. Widening the range of progesterone formulations will increase the usefulness of this drug in a variety of clinical interventions. We undertook this study to create an ideal transdermal progesterone patch, which requires a reliable system to host and release drugs sustainably. This study investigates the use of a combined fatty acid, polysorbate 80 in distilled water or ethanol, with the well-known polymer polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP). The rheology of the polymer solutions was investigated with incremental changes in either PVP or polysorbate. For each polymer solution, electrospinning was used to create fibre systems, which were characterised by scanning electron microscopy. The optimal polymer solution consisted of 2 g of PVP in 20 ml of ethanol with 4 ml of polysorbate. Performance analysis was completed by carrying out two drug release studies: direct submersion of fibres in PBS and transdermal drug delivery of fibres across a cellulose acetate membrane using Franz Diffusion Cells. The results have shown that the polysorbate loaded fibre systems reached near 100% drug release (over two weeks) and nearly 5 times faster than the fibres without polysorbate. This confirms the penetrative enhancing capabilities of polysorbate widely presented in literature. Kinetic release studies and geometric models were also used to observe the experimental behaviour compared to expectations. Experimental results closely fit both the Makoid Banakar model and the Geometric Equation.