A NEW PERSPECTIVE FOR THE TREATMENT OF DANDRUFF & ASSOCIATED ALOPECIA WITH EMULSION BASED GEL CONTAINING KETOCONAZOLE AND MINOXIDIL

Many antifungal drugs are used topically in order to treat fungal diseases. Among them Ketoconazole is used widely among these topical antifungal drugs for eradication of dandruff. Scalp with dandruff causes more hair fall than normal scalp and hair fall is treated by topical Minoxidil formulation. Aim of present work is to prepare a topical formulation containing both ketoconazole and minoxidil in order to treat dandruff and associated diffused alopecia simultaneously. Both the drugs are incorporated in emulgel at a particular step in order to prepare formulation. Emulgel i.e. emulsion in gel have been emerged out as one of the most beneficial topical drug delivery system as it contain both hydrophilic and lipophilic drugs with dual controlled release system i.e. emulsion and gel. Incorporation of emulsion in gel also increases the stability of emulsion. Emulgel was prepared by using carbopol 934 as gelling agent. The influence of concentration of gelling agent and emulsifying agent on the drug release from the prepared emulgel was investigated using a 2×2² factorial design. The prepared emulgel were evaluated for their physical appearance, viscosity, pH, spreadability, drug content and drug release. All the prepared emulgel showed acceptable physical properties concerning color, homogeneity, consistency, spreadability and pH value. The highest release was observed with Formulation F8 (92.65±0.08 % for Ketoconazole and 97.63±0.27 % for Minoxidil) and lowest with Formulation F1 (31.39±0.28 % for Ketoconazole and 40.66±0.19 % for Minoxidil). Since we need lowest Ketoconazole release in circulation and highest deposition in skin for dandruff eradication, hence Formulation F1 was further evaluated for drug deposition in rat skin via indirect method and 41.62 % of Ketoconazole and 15.83 % of minoxidil was observed. Thus this formulation can be used for simultaneous treatment of dandruff and associated diffused alopecia for better patient compliance