A pharmaceutical study on smoking cessation drug for topical application / Yasmine Elazab Abdellatif ; Supervised Hanan Ellithy , Emad Basalious , Amal Youssef Mohamed

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Pharmacy - Department of Pharmaceutics

Nicotine (NI), the main active component in cigarettes is a water and lipid soluble drug which is absorbed via respiratory tissues, skin, and gastrointestinal tract (GIT). It undergoes extensive liver metabolism by cytochome P450 enzymes. Smokers become dependent on as Nicotine (NI) raises the levels of dopamine and norepinephine in the brain and when people stop smoking, NI withdrawal syndrome occurs such as craving for tobacco, irritability, nervousness, concentration difficulty, impatience, insomnia and increased appetite. Recently, increasing interest has been given to the use of NI or its salts like Nicotine bitartrate (NBT) in different dosage forms (gum, inhalers, buccal film and transdermal patch) as Nicotine replacement therapy for smoking cessation. Transdermal drug delivery of the Nicotine is the most suitable route for Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) to avoid the first pass effect, but still the skin considers as big barrier for permeation of Nicotine and reaching to general circulation. Based on these considerations, the current work has aimed to develop different delivery systems of NBT as substitution of Nicotine for topical application. The improvement of skin permeation of NBT was performed by using sucrose esters (SE) as permeation enhancer in the matrix patch system and in combination with glycerin in the NBT loaded glycerosomal systems. In this way, easy, painless and continuous NBT delivery through the skin into the blood stream could be ensured producing constant plasma concentration over a long period

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