FORMULATION OF FLUCONAZOLE TOPICAL GEL FOR IMPROVED ANTIFUNGAL EFFECT

Abstract

Healing with medicinal plants is as old as mankind. Ever since ancient times, in search for rescue of diseases, the people looked for drugs in nature. Medicinal plants have always had an important place in the therapeutic armory of mankind. According to WHO, in Africa, Asia and Latin America up to 80% of population relies on medicinal plants in order to meet their primary health care needs (Burton, Smith, & Falkenberg, 2015). Medicinal plants as life – saving pharmaceutical agents are becoming essential component in the search for new medicines to combat various diseases. Out of the 350,000 plant species known so far, about 35,000 (some estimate up to 70,000) are used worldwide for medicinal purposes and less than about 0.5% of these have been investigated for their phytochemical and pharmacological potential, yet many issues are to be addressed  (Shasany, Shukla, & Khanuja, 2007).

Plants are considered as the richest resource of drugs of traditional systems of medicine, modern medicines, nutraceuticals, food supplements, folk medicines, pharmaceutical intermediated and chemical entities for synthetic drugs(Burton et al., 2015). Over 50% of all allopathic drugs are made up of natural products and thus, natural product play an important role in drug development programs of the pharmaceutical industry (Patwardhan, Vaidya, & Chorghade, 2004).  In this regard, present study involves a medicinal plant named Mallotusphillipinensisin combination of antifungal agent i.e. fluconazole (FLZ) for the development of topical gel formulation. Two approaches had been considered; surfactant i.e. sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS)-aided and ethosomal based topical gel formulations for the improved residence time, stability and antifungal activity ofFLZ.