Natural polymers for vaginal mucoadhesive delivery of vinegar, using design of experiment methods

Abstract

Background/Aim. Vinegar is one of the main international traditional nutraceuticals, and it has been used as a vaginal health protectant due to vagina pH balance maintenance and antimicrobial properties. Since the main form of vinegar is liquid, it is difficult to apply vaginally due to its short reten-tion. The aim of this study was to design a vaginal mucoad-hesive gel made of vinegar. Methods. Xanthan gum and tragacanth were utilized as natural gel-forming polymers. The effects of xanthan gum and tragacanth on mucoadhesion strength and drug release of the gel formulations were opti-mized using a 3 level (32) factorial design. Several physico-chemical properties of the gel formulations, including gel vis-cosity, lubricity, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of hydrogel chains, and chain release kinetic, were also inves-tigated. Results. It was found that tragacanth possessed a sta-tistically significant effect on release rate control (p-value = 0.0027), while both tragacanth and xanthan gum had a signif-icant effect (p-value = 0.0001 and 0.0017, respectively) on mucoadhesion property. Formulation F7 with 5% xanthan gum and 1% tragacanth (mucoadhesion = 0.4632 N and re-lease rate = 88.8% in 6 hours) considered as the optimum formulation with some modifications. Conclusion. Xanthan gum and tragacanth can be considered as appropriate natural polymers for vaginal drug delivery.