Increasing the activity and safety of the anti-inflammatory drug lornoxicam via niosomal encapsulation / Asmaa Badawy M. Darwish ; Supervised Soad Aly Yehia , Mohamed Shafik Elridy

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Pharmacy - Department of Pharmaceutics

Niosomes as a vesicular system are well documented for delivering drugs, in controlled manner to enhance bioavailability and get better therapeutic effect over a longer period of time. Lornoxicam is a NSAID, COX-1 and COX-2 inhibitor, which is used for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and acute pain. The present study dealt with the preparation and characterization of lornoxicam niosomes. The selected niosomal formulations were incorporated into gel as an effective transdermal formulation of lornoxicam with the aim to improve skin permeability and sustained delivery of lornoxicam. Lornoxicam loaded niosomes were prepared by the thin-film hydration method using different proportions of Span 60 or 40, cholesterol with or without adding stearylamine and dicetyl phosphate as a positive and negative charge-inducing agents. The results showed that, neutral niosomes gave the highest encapsulation efficiency. All formulations were characterized using transmission electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, vesicle size and zeta potential. The vesicle size of lornoxicam niosomes ranged from 147 to 2298 nm. In-vitro release profiles revealed that the drug release occurred in two phases, a controlled release phase that lasted for 8 hours, characterized by a relatively moderate drug release rate, more than 45% of the entrapped lornoxicam can be released, followed by a steady phase with a reduced and slow release rate that maintained for 72 hours. Physical stability study conducted on the two selected lornoxicam niosomal formulations gave better stability, upon storage

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