Abstract
The skin offers an accessible and convenient site for the administration of medications. To this end, the field of transdermal drug delivery, aimed at developing safe and efficacious means of delivering medications across the skin, has in the past and continues to garner much time and investment with the continuous advancement of new and innovative approaches. This review details the progress and current status of the transdermal drug delivery field and describes numerous pharmaceutical developments which have been employed to overcome limitations associated with skin delivery systems. Advantages and disadvantages of the various approaches are detailed, commercially marketed products are highlighted and particular attention is paid to the emerging field of microneedle technologies.
Highlights
The most common routes of drug delivery are the oral and parenteral routes with the majority of small molecule drugs conventionally delivered orally [1,2]
The conventional routes of medication delivery have many inherent limitations which could potentially be overcome by advanced drug delivery methodologies such as transdermal drug delivery (TDD)
Examples of undesirable side effects of ultrasound approaches were observed by Singer et al (1998) when it was shown that low-intensity ultrasound caused minor skin reactions in dogs while high-intensity ultrasound was capable of inducing second-degree burns [56]
Summary
The most common routes of drug delivery are the oral and parenteral routes with the majority of small molecule drugs conventionally delivered orally [1,2]. The oral route has the advantage of pre-determined doses, portability and patient self-administration For these reasons, the oral route remains the most convenient means of delivering medications [3,4]. The requirement for an inexpensive and non-invasive means of vaccination, especially in the developing world [3,14,15], has given rise to substantial research focused on the development of simple, needle-free systems such as TDD for vaccination purposes. This theme will be explored further in Section 4.5.2 of this review
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