An Introduction to the Approaches of Novel Drug Delivery Systems for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)

Abstract

The currently available anti HIV agents have several drawbacks such as short half life, low bioavailability, poor CNS penetration and retention, hepatic first pass metabolism, undesirable side effects and frequent dosing regimen. Due to these drawbacks antiretroviral (ARV) drugs mostly oral formulations are inconvenience to the HIV patients and frequent administration of doses lead to poor patient compliance. So, these drawbacks give researchers tremendous opportunities to design and develop novel drug delivery systems to overcome the transport barriers and inherent elimination and metabolism problems associated with this anti HIV drugs. Novel drug delivery systems are developed by the application of the concepts and techniques of controlled release drug administration which not only extend the potent life of existing drug but also minimize the scope and expenditure of testing required for FDA approval and which make clinically already established drugs do their therapeutic best. The objective in the design of a controlled drug release system is to release a pharmacologically active agent in a predetermined, predictable and reproducible fashion. Many novel drug delivery systems have been developed e.g. Transdermal, Intrauterine, Intravaginal, Niosomes, Liposomes, Nanoparticles and Implants etc. These drug delivery systems have added a new dimension of optimizing the treatment of several disease conditions by modifying various pharmacokinetics parameters. These drug delivery system releases the drug either by zero order kinetics or by first order kinetics or by both simultaneously. The aim of this review is to provide a summary of the application of novel drug delivery systems to the delivery of anti-HIV drugs, specifically antiretrovirals. controlled/sustained and targeted/intracellular drug delivery are the important ones for antiretroviral (ARV) drugs which may useful for further research in future.