FORMULATION, DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF ANTIFUNGAL ECONAZOLE LOADED INVASOMES GEL FOR TOPICAL FUNGAL TREATMENT

Topical drug administration is a localised drug delivery system that can be used to administer drugs to any part of the body via ophthalmic, rectal, vaginal, and cutaneous channels. The principal route of topical medication delivery is through the skin, which is one of the most easily accessible organs on the human body for topical administration. Fungus can cause a variety of skin illnesses. Antifungal medications are fungicides that are used to treat mycoses such athlete's foot, ringworm, and candidasis. Antifungal kills the fungal organism without harming the host by leveraging distinctions between mammalian and fungal cells. Hence we attempted to develop Econazole-loaded invasomes hydrogel. Invasomes were prepared by conventional thin layer evaporation technique using Phosphatidylcholine, terpene (Limonene) and ethanol. In present study was to develop and characterize Econazole -loaded invasomal drug carrier systems. Different Formulations (F1 to F6) of invasomes were prepared and evaluated for average vesicle size, zeta potential and entrapment efficiency. Drug content of econazole incorporated invasomes gel for formulation IG-1, IG-2 and IG-3 was found to be 98.85±0.15, 99.45±0.10 and 98.74±0.23 respectively. The maximum drug content was found in formulation IG-2 (99.45±0.10), select as optimized formulation. When the regression coefficient values of were compared, it was observed that ‘r2’ values of Higuchi was maximum i.e. 0.985 hence indicating drug release from formulations was found to follow Higuchi kinetics. Key words: Econazole, Invasomes, Fungal Treatment, formulation, Evaluatio