REVIEW ARTICLE ON PERMEATION ENHANCERS: A MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH IN DRUG DELIVERY TECHNOLOGY

The human skin serves as an impediment, a thermo regulator and prevents excessive loss of water from the internal organs. Various ways of transferring the drugs have been developed by modifying the barrier properties of the skin. Enhancement in skin penetration by hydration of the stratum corneum, or by use of chemical enhancers acting on the lipids and keratinized structures in the stratum corneum, partitioning and solubility effects is a promising tool in potential clinical applications. Penetration enhancement is a new emerging technology which has the potential to increase the number of drugs taken trans-dermally. Also the drugs with short biological half-life could be easily administered. Among many advantages over other routes the three crucial ones are avoiding metabolism in liver, minimal negative effects and increased bioavailability. Also, the stratum corneum prevents the loss of physiologically essential substances and as a result provides penetration resistance by acting as a protective barrier. This is the rate limiting step in the absorption of the drug percutaneously. In this review article, we present a summary of various advances made in the field of permeation enhancers based on literature survey of various research articles.