Transdermal delivery of imipramine and doxepin from newly oil-in-water nanoemulsions for an analgesic and anti-allodynic activity: Development, characterization and in vivo evaluation

Antidepressants have been considered by their analgesic activity in numerous studies, and specifically tricyclic antidepressants to possess the greatest efficacy. Imipramine and doxepin have been reported to exhibit local anaesthetic properties. In order to investigate their cutaneous analgesic effect after topical application a nanoemulsion vehicle was developed. This nanoemulsion is composed of propilenglicol, Transcutol®, water, Labrasol®, Plurol Oleique®, isostearyl isostearate, oleic acid, and d-limonene. The final concentration of imipramine or doxepin in the nanoemulsion system was 3% (w/w). The nanoemulsions were characterized by pH, viscosity, droplet size, polydispersity index and finally, a morphological and structural examination was carried out by using transmission electron microscopy. Furthermore, the present work also reports stability studies on the nanoemulsion formulations to evaluate the integrity of the formulation; these indicate that formulations are stable for a period of three months. Moreover ex vivo studies were performed to evaluate permeation behaviour through human skin and predict plasma concentrations concluding that topically applied imipramine and doxepin loaded nanoemulsions were safe for a local effect. Similarly, the in vivo analgesic and anti-allodynic activity in rats was evaluated being stronger for the doxepin loaded nanoemulsion. This study demonstrated that nanoemulsion containing doxepin could be promising as an alternative analgesic therapy with a potential clinical application.

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► A potential topical use of TAC for local analgesic effect was proposed in this work.
► Nanoemulsion containing imipramine and doxepin were developed and characterized.
► O/W nanoemulsions were stables with homogeneous droplet size and spherically shaped.
► Ex vivo and in vivo assay results confirmed a potential use of doxepin nanoemulsion.