One drawback of traditional forms of medical ocular dosage is drug dilution by tear;\nmoreover, drugs are rapidly drained away from pre-corneal cavity by tear flow and lacrimo-nasal\ndrainage. Prolonging contact time with different strategies and mucoadhesive vehicles will help to\ncontinuously deliver drugs to the eyes. For this study, we prepared and evaluated the effects of a\nnanostructure lipid carrier (NLC) on propranolol hydrochloride as a hydrophilic drug model for\nrabbit corneal permeation. Propranolol hydrochloride NLC was prepared using cold homogenization.\nThe lipid was melted, then the drug and surfactant were dispersed and stirred into the melted lipid.\nThis fused lipid phase was scattered in aqueous solution containing the cosurfactant at 4 C and\nthen homogenized. We evaluated particle size, drug loading, drug release, and NLC permeability\nthrough rabbit cornea as well as the formulaâ??s effect on the cornea. Our results show that drug\nloading efficiency depended on the surfactant/lipid ratio (S/L) and the percentages of liquid lipid\nand Transcutol (Gattefosse, Saint-Priest, France) (as solubilizer). Drug release data were evaluated\nwith the Higuchi model and a significant correlation was shown between the S/L ratio and the\namount of drug released after 4 and 48 h. NLC formulations improved propranolol hydrochloride\npermeation. We conclude that the effect of the NLC formulations was due to mucoadhesive and film\nforming properties.
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