FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF LOVASTATIN TRANSDERMAL PATCHES

Abstract: The skin can be used as the site for drug administration for continuous transdermal drug infusion into the systemic circulation. For the continuous diffusion/penetration of the drugs through the intact skin surface membrane-moderated systems, matrix dispersion type systems, adhesive diffusion-controlled systems and micro reservoir systems have been developed. In the present work, an attempt has been made to develop a matrix-type transdermal therapeutic system comprising of Lovastatin with different ratios of polymers Eudragit L100 and Ethyl Cellulose using solvent evaporation techniques. The physicochemical compatibility of the drug and the polymers was studied by FTIR. The results obtained showed no physical-chemical incompatibility between the drug and the polymers. F8 formulation has been selected as the optimized formulation among all the other formulations because of the highest concentration of penetrating enhancer with the highest concentration of ethyl cellulose. The in vitro drug diffusion studies from the formulation were found to be released (99.36 ± 2.04 %) up to 12 hours. All the evaluation parameters obtained from the best formulation were found to be satisfactory. Keywords: Lovastatin, Permeation Enhancer, and Transdermal drug delivery.