OPTIMIZATION OF PLURONIC LECITHIN ORGANOGEL OF TERBINAFINE HYDROCHLORIDE USING DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTS FOR THE TREATMENT OF FUNGAL DISEASES

The research work focused on the optimization of Terbinafine HCl (TBH) pluronic lecithin organogels (PLOs) for increasing the penetration and efficacy of the drug. The factors affecting the PLOs such as viscosity and percentage drug release, were screened and optimized using the Box-Behnken design. The optimum formulation based on desirability (0.995) exhibited 3139.92 Cp for viscosity and 93.4561% for drug release. The optimized PLO was evaluated for drug content, pH, in-vitro drug release and ex-vivo studies. The percentage cumulative release of TBH permeated from optimized PLOs and marketed cream (MC) at the end of 12 h after the application was found to be 60.29 ± 0.69% and 19.35 ± 2.19% respectively. The comparatively higher permeability TBH in optimized PLOs could be due to increased solubility and diffusion coefficient of the drug. In-vitro microbial assay, studies showed that the PLO reduced the fungal burden of Candida albicans as compared to M.C (0.34 ± 0.08 mm) in a shorter duration of time with a larger zone of inhibition (0.58 ± 0.12 mm). Hence, it was concluded that TBH PLOs had better skin targeting ability and may serve as a promising carrier in the treatment of fungal skin diseases.