Original Articles
Vijaya Bhaskar N.*, Ravi Praka
Abstract
The aim of the present study was to formulate and evaluate Simvastatin nanoparticles, loaded into transdermal patch. Simvastatin, a lipid lowering agent, because of its short biological half life (t1/2, 2 hours) only 5% of its dose reaches to the systemic circulation of the blood on oral administration. Hence it is a suitable drug to formulate into transdermal form. Polymeric nanoparticles containing drug and non-toxic biocompatible polymers (chitosan, PLA & PCL) with a surfactant were prepared using solvent evaporation technique. FTIR study reports have shown that there was no interaction between drug and excipients. Nanoparticles were evaluated for their size, poly dispersity index (PDI), entrapment efficiency and in vitro release studies. Scanning electron microscopy reports shown that the nanoparticles are spherical shape and has size range 122.4 – 170.3 nm. PDI was found to be in the range of 0.094 – 0.204. Percent entrapment efficiency was between 82.5±1.6 – 92.8±1.2. Based on the results of the entrapment and in vitro release studies, formulation SP4 (PLA) found to be suitable to formulate into transdermal patch. The nanoparticles were loaded into a transdermal patch formulated using HPMC in varying concentration. All the patches prepared were evaluated for folding endurance, flatness, tensile strength, moisture content and moisture uptake were found to be in necessary range. The in vitro release studies has shown TPN1 was found to be better than other formulations and it was selected as optimised formulation.