Chitosan Nanoparticles as Oral Drug Carriers.

The use of nanoparticles as drug delivery systems has increased in importance in the last decades. Despite the disadvantages of difficulty swallowing, gastric irritation, low solubility, and poor bioavailability, oral administration stands out as the most widely used route for therapeutic treatments, though it may not always be the most effective route. The effect of the first hepatic pass is one of the primary challenges that drugs must overcome to carry out their therapeutic effect. For these reasons, controlled-release systems based on nanoparticles synthesized from biodegradable natural polymers have been reported to be very efficient in enhancing oral delivery in multiple studies. Chitosan has been shown to have an extensive variability of properties and roles in the pharmaceutical and health fields; of its most important properties are the ability to encapsulate and transport drugs within the body and enhance the drug interaction with the target cells, which improves the efficacy of the encapsulated drugs. The physicochemical properties of chitosan give it the ability to form nanoparticles through multiple mechanisms, which will be addressed in this article. The present review article focuses on highlighting the applications of chitosan nanoparticles for oral drug delivery.

Microneedles as an Alternative Strategy for Drug Delivery.

The transdermal route has been widely studied in the last decade due to its multiple advantages, where one of the most promising transdermal systems are microneedles, these allow the delivery of drugs in a painless way and with easy application, being very attractive for patients with chronic treatments. This review highlights the new research that develops this approach to transdermal therapies, including examples of materials and methods used for their manufacture and presenting an overview of the clinical trials currently available in Cochrane in a demonstrative way to understand the growing popularity of this strategy.