Advanced topical drug delivery system for the management of vaginal candidiasis

Abstract

Vaginal candidiasis or vulvovaginal candidiasis (VC) is a common mucosal infection of vagina, mainly caused by Candida species. The major symptoms of VC are dyspareunia, pruritis, itching, soreness, vagina as well as vulvar erythema and edema. Most common risk factors that lead to the imbalance in the vaginal micro biota are the use of antibiotics, pregnancy, diabetes mellitus, immuno suppression as in AIDS or HIV patients, frequent sexual intercourse, spermicide and intra-uterine devices and vaginal douching. Various anti-fungal drugs are available for effective treatment of VC. Different conventional vaginal formulations (creams, gels, suppositories, powder, ointment, etc.) for VC are available today but have limited efficacy because of lesser residence time on vaginal epithelium due to self-cleansing action of vagina. So to overcome this problem, an extended and intimate contact with vaginal mucosa is desired; which can be accomplished by utilizing mucoadhesive polymers. Mucoadhesive polymers have an excellent binding capacity to mucosal tissues for considerable period of time. This unique property of these polymers significantly enhances retention time of different formulations on mucosal tissues. Currently, various novel formulations such as liposomes, nano-and microparticles, micro-emulsions, bio-adhesive gel and tablets are used to control and treat VC. In this review, we focused on current status of vaginal candidiasis, conventional and nanotechnology inspired formulation approaches.

Tretinoin-loaded liposomal formulations: from lab to comparative clinical study in acne patients

“…Liposomes are microscopic structures consisting of one or more concentric spheres of lipid bilayers enclosing aqueous compartments. Liposomes have been successfully used to encapsulate lipophilic and hydrophilic compounds (Eroglu et al, 2014;Johal et al, 2014;Ali et al, 2014;El-badry et al, 2014;Fang et al, 2015). In the dermatological field, liposomes were used initially only because of their moisturizing and restoring action.…”

Archaeosomes: an excellent carrier for drug and cell delivery

“…This chemical step therefore, results in the isolation of corresponding dihydroxyl archaeal lipid cores (Hussain et al, 2014). The Syrinx Diagnostika Company patented several new structures of archaeal lipids derived from T. acidophilum lipid extracts (Johal et al, 2014). Indeed after hydrolysis of the original polar head groups, a few organic synthetic steps such as oxidation of primary alcohols to carboxylic acids followed by activation and coupling with suitable amines afforded efficient access to the desired archaeal lipids bearing aminated polar head groups ( Figure 3) (Benvegnu et al, 2009).…”

Development, optimization and characterization of glycyrrhetinic acid–chitosan nanoparticles of atorvastatin for liver targeting

“…This article contains a novel hepatic drug delivery system using GA-chitosan as the carrier for delivering atorvastatin by reducing its toxic levels in blood and direct targeting to liver. Meanwhile, the drug-loaded nanoparticles were prepared by ionic gelatin method (Johal et al, 2014), and the release profile (Joshi et al, 2014) and targetability of the nanoparticles (Kataria et al, 2014) was evaluated by in vitro and in vivo Studies (Kaur et al, 2014a).…”