Sushila Saini, Shikha Baghel Chauhan, S.S. Agrawal

Abstract

Transdermal route is the most convenient route for the delivery of drug having short biological half life and poorly soluble drugs. This route provides many advantages over other routes as avoiding first pass hepatic metabolism, decrease side effects, GI effects and increased bioavailability. There is a limitation of this route that is difficulty of permeation of drug through the skin. The skin, in particular stratum corneum provides protective barrier that prevents the loss of physiologically essential substances and provide resistance to penetration and it is the rate limiting step in percutaneous absorption. So, various Penetration Enhancers have been used to promote the percutaneous absorption of a number of drugs. Several research studies have been done in transdermal permeation studies using various enhancers for several drug moieties. This review highlights the detailed role of penetration enhancers and describes the classification of different penetration enhancers with their mechanism of action and properties. This review also focuses on the Novel Penetration Enhancers and the various factors to be taken into consideration for selection of new penetration enhancers for improving bioavailability of transdermal drug delivery system.