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Programmable Transdermal Clonidine Delivery Through Voltage-Gated Carbon Nanotube Membranes
Journal of Pharmaceutical Science (2014)
  • Ji Wu, Georgia Southern University
  • Caroline Strasinger, University of Kentucky
  • Kalpana S. Paudel, University of Kentucky
  • Dana Hammell, University of Kentucky
  • Raghotham R. Pinninti, University of Kentucky
  • Bruce J. Hinds, University of Kentucky
  • Audra Stinchcomb, University of Kentucky
Abstract
Oral dosage forms and traditional transdermal patches are inadequate for complex clonidine therapy dosing schemes, because of the variable dose/flux requirement for the treatment of opioid withdrawal symptoms. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the in vitro transdermal flux changes of clonidine in response to alterations in carbon nanotube (CNT) delivery rates by applying various electrical bias. Additional skin diffusion studies were carried out to demonstrate the therapeutic feasibility of the system. This study demonstrated that application of a small electrical bias (-600 mV) to the CNT membrane on the skin resulted in a 4.7-fold increase in clonidine flux as compared with no bias (0 mV) application. The high and low clonidine flux values were very close to the desired variable flux of clonidine for the treatment of opioid withdrawal symptoms. Therapeutic feasibility studies demonstrated that CNT membrane served as the rate-limiting step to clonidine diffusion and lag and transition times were suitable for the clonidine therapy. Skin elimination studies revealed that clonidine depletion from the skin would not negatively affect clonidine therapy. Overall, this study showed that clonidine administration difficulties associated with the treatment of opiate withdrawal symptoms can be reduced with the programmable CNT membrane transdermal system.
Keywords
  • active transport,
  • carbon nanotube membrane,
  • clonidine,
  • diffusion,
  • drug addiction,
  • membrane transport,
  • nanotechnology,
  • programmable drug delivery,
  • skin permeation,
  • transdermal delivery
Disciplines
Publication Date
June, 2014
DOI
10.1002/jps.23940
Citation Information
Ji Wu, Caroline Strasinger, Kalpana S. Paudel, Dana Hammell, et al.. "Programmable Transdermal Clonidine Delivery Through Voltage-Gated Carbon Nanotube Membranes" Journal of Pharmaceutical Science Vol. 103 Iss. 6 (2014) p. 1829 - 1838 ISSN: 0022-3549
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/ji_wu/40/