Transdermal Drug Delivery Systems for Clotrimazole

Pharmacy

Clotrimazole is a broad-spectrum antifungal agent that is used to treat a variety of fungal skin infections like athlete's foot, jock itch, ringworm infections. However, oral delivery of clotrimazole can lead to several side effects like nausea, vomiting, and mouth discomfort. Transdermal drug delivery systems (TDDS) offer an effective alternative route of administration for clotrimazole that can avoid the gastrointestinal side effects associated with oral delivery. TDDS provides prolonged release of drugs with a single application, improves bioavailability, therapeutic efficacy and patient compliance. This review comprehensively covers the formulation strategies, physicochemical characterization, and performance evaluation of clotrimazole transdermal patches reported in recent literature. The polymers, plasticizers, permeation enhancers and fabrication techniques used for developing clotrimazole TDDS have been reviewed. The critical quality attributes like thickness, folding endurance, moisture content, drug content, in vitro drug release and skin permeation have also been discussed. The purpose of this review is to provide a systematic reference on the formulation development and evaluation of clotrimazole transdermal patches

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