Extraction, Formulation and In-Vitro Evaluation of Curcumin Emulgel for Topical Delivery

A. Rajesh Pavan*, K. Sirisha, S. Mounika, C. Ramalakshi, S. Leelamrutha
Department of Pharmaceutics, JNTUA-Oil Technological and Pharmaceutical Research Institute, Anantapuramu, A.P, India.

A B S T R A C T
Emulgel is widely accepted topical drug delivery system because of improved patience compliance, Avoiding first pass metabolism. Rheumatoid arthritis is an auto immune disorder which destroys bone joints, cartilage & lungs which leads to multi organ dysfunction. Oral therapy requires high doses of steroidal drugs which leads to toxicity. Curcumin is one of the compounds which are used in rheumatoid arthritis which helps in reducing the pain. Therefore, in present study we extracted active constituents from freshly collected rhizomes of turmeric and nine formulations have been prepared by using three different concentrations of gelling agents like Carbopol 934, Sodium Carboxy methyl cellulose and HPMC. All polymers were tested for their compatibility study with pure drug by using FTIR spectral analysis and from this studies Extracted drug was found to be compatible with all the polymers. All the Formulations were evaluated for their physical appearance like colour, homogeneity and texture. F1-F3 and F7-F9 were found to be in cream colour, F4 and F5 were light yellow, F6 was found to be yellow. All the formulations were found to be homogenous and smooth. The pH of nine formulations were determined and found to be in the range of 6.5-6.7 which meets the pH of the skin. The drug content of the prepared formulations were determined and found to be in the range of 94.21-98.94%. The in-vitro drug release of all the  formulations were determined up to four hours and at the end of fourth hour the maximum percentage drug release of 78.88% was shown in F3 and least percentage of drug release of 58.46 % was shown by F9. Hence from this drug release studies formulations F2, F3 and F4 were selected as optimized formulations because these three formulations has shown optimum results for all the parameters like pH, Drug content, In-vitro drug release etc. From this study we concluded that Curcumin Emulgel was best external semisolid preparation which improves drug bioavailability compared to other conventional semisolid dosage forms.
Keywords: Emulgel, Carbopol, Sodium Carboxy methyl cellulose