Abstract

TRANSUNGUAL DRUG DELIVERY: CHALLENGES AND APPROACHES

*Sakina Bikaneri, Brinda Sreelesh and Dr. Gitika Dhingra

ABSTRACT

Nail disorders can arise at any age. Not only are they cause of cosmetic concern, nail disease can cause a lot of pain and discomfort in day to day life and can affect the patients psychologically. Oral antifungal drugs have been used in treatment of various fungal infections like onychomycosis, nail psoriasis, but they tend to have bioavailability problems and produce systemic side effects such as liver toxicity (drugs like ketoconazole, terbinafine). To overcome the limitations of the conventional oral formulation there is a need of an effective drug delivery system that can deliver the drug deep into nail bed. Therefore topical delivery through nails also known as transungual drug delivery system came into picture. A variety of topical formulations like gel, cream are available for the treatment of nail infection. Current topical treatments avoid the adverse effects associated with systemic antifungal however they have restricted therapeutic effectiveness as these formulations are unable to provide the nail plate with therapeutically sufficient amount of antifungal drug to the target sites to eradicate the infection. To overcome these problems mechanical and chemical approaches were studied. Nail lacquers are the most optimum carrier of anti fungal drugs. This systemic review covers the anatomy of a human nail, diseases related to nail plate, and some techniques used to enhance the topical bioavailability of the drugs across the nail, latest trends in drug delivery across the nail.

Keywords: Anti-fungal, nail lacquer, transungual delivery.