Performance of curcumin in nanosized carriers niosomes and ethosomes as potential antiinflammatory delivery system for topical application

Abstract

Curcumin (CUR) is one of the most commonly used herbal product; it shows effective antiinflammatory and anti-oxidant effects. However, poor aqueous solubility and low permeability are the major challenges in therapeutic application of curcumin. One class of vesicular nanocarriers called Niosome and ethosome which have proved to possess distinct advantages were used to encapsulate curcumin and evaluated for their morphology, particle size, zeta potential, entrapment efficiency (EE%) and drug release. They were incorporated into hydroxy propyl methyl cellulose (HPMC15000) gel then, evaluated on the rat skin via inhibition of carrageenan induced rat paw edema. The results showed that the particle size of curcumin loaded niosomes and ethosomes were ranged (317.5 1.91 to 558.3 8.587 nm) and (182.1 5.3 to 354.5 30.03 nm), respectively. Skin permeation studies demonstrated that CUR permeability coefficient through rat kin for gel formulations of loaded vesicles was ~ four times higher as compared to free CUR. The in-vivo anti-inflammatory studies proved that gel formulations of CUR vesicles possessed higher significant inhibition of carrageenan induced rat paw edema when compared to pure curcumin. Accordingly, the results revealed that, curcumin loaded nanovesicels held great potential approaches as anti-inflammatory in topical application.