RESUMEN
The development and spread of resistance to antimicrobial drugs is hampering the management of microbial infectious and wound healing processes. Curcumin is the most active and effective constituent of Curcuma longa L., also known as turmeric, and has a very long and strong history of medicinal value for human health and skincare. Curcumin has been proposed as strong antimicrobial potentialities and many attempts have been made to determine its ability to conjointly control bacterial growth and promote wound healing. However, low aqueous solubility, poor tissue absorption and short plasma half-life due its rapid metabolism needs to be solved for made curcumin formulations as suitable treatment for wound healing. New curcumin nanoformulations have been designed to solve the low bioavailability problem of curcumin. Thus, in the present review, the therapeutic applications of curcumin nanoformulations for antimicrobial and wound healing purposes is described.
RESUMEN
Objective: India is referred as goldmine of herbal drugs but still lack of optimization of herbal drugs, which has kept us on the back foot. The rationale of the study is to prepare optimized transdermal drug delivery system of curcumin employing response surface methodology to study the collective effect of independent variables like concentration of ethyl cellulose, hydroxyl propyl methyl cellulose and dibutyl phthalate which significantly influenced characteristics like percentage elongation and in vitro drug release. Method: Twenty formulations containing varying concentrations of polymers and permeation enhancer were prepared using solvent casting technique. Result: The study revealed that the effect of dibutyl phthalate (DBP) concentration was the highest on percentage elongation (P < 0.0001), while hydroxy propyl methyl cellulose (HPMC) concentration exhibited pronounced effect on drug release (P < 0.0001) through dialysis membrane. Linear model fitted the best for curcumin release and elongation for all formulations. According to Derringer's desirability prediction tool, the composition of optimized film was found to be 242.14% of HPMC, 109.59% of ethyl cellulose (EC), and 1.03% of DBP. Under these conditions, the optimized patch exhibited a predicted value of %elongation and in vitro drug release of 94.35% and 80.0306%, respectively, which was comparable to the actual values of percent elongation and in vitro drug release i.e. 95.02% and 81.03% respectively. FTIR and thermal studies were also performed which revealed no interaction or complexation between drug and excipients. The ex vivo study performed using rat skin showed that the cumulative drug release from the optimized patch showed flux of (30.68 ± 18) µg/cm2/h. Conclusion: It can be concluded that in future if proper optimization of herbal formulations is carried out, they can become the first choice for patients as compare to synthetic drugs.