Transdermal Dual-Controlled Delivery of Testosterone and Estradiol: (I) Impact of system Design

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Abstract
A multilaminate-type transdermal drug delivery (m-TDD) system was designed with the objective of delivering testosterone and estradiol simultaneously but at different daily dosage rates. To achieve such a dual-controlled transdermal delivery, skin permeation enhancer and permselective membrane were incorporated into the system. The results demonstrated that skin permeation enhancer, which is incorporated into the testosterone reservoir layer, and permselective membrane, which is added onto the drugreleasing surface of estradiol reservoir layer, can both alter the overall rate of skin permeation for both drugs. The skin permeation enhancer was observed to enhance the skin permeation rate of testosterone, while the permselective membrane was shown to reduce the skin permeation rate of estradiol. The addition of permselective membrane was observed to modify the release kinetics of estradiol from the matrix diffusion-controlled drug delivery to membrane permeation-controlled drug delivery. Other factors which may affect the deliver rate of drug, e.g., the thickness of permselective membrane and loading dose of drugs, were also studied. Furthermore, evaluation of physical stability of this mTDD system demonstrated that the inter-layer migration of drugs is at minimum.