"Application of Taguchi Orthogonal Array Design for the Optimization of Frovatriptan Loaded Transdermal Patches for Migraine Therapy"

ABSTRACTThe present study focuses on the formulation and characterization of transdermal patches for frovatriptan aimed at achievingcontrolled and sustained drug delivery for effective migraine management. Considering the drug’s short half-life and loworal bioavailability due to first pass metabolism, a transdermal approach was selected to enhance therapeutic efficiency. Patches were prepared using the solvent casting method employing HPMC, Ethyl cellulose and Eudragit L100 as filmforming polymers, while propylene glycol (PG), ethanol, and DMSO were employed as penetration enhancer. A Taguchi L9orthogonal design was applied to systematically to optimize formulation variables and identify the most influential factorsaffecting drug permeation, it was found that the first rank was given to concentration of polymer compare to other factor(type of polymer, concentration of permeation enhancer) and the Ethyl cellulose-based formulation emerged as an optimizedpatch with the drug permeation of 98.87% after 12hr of diffusion studies and it showed zero order kinetics and fit peppasmodel, on -fickian (anomalous) diffusion