Sonophoresis in transdermal drug deliverys

•We explain mechanisms (thermal, cavitation effect) of sonophoresis in detail.•The research on transport pathway of drugs by sonophoresis is introduced.•A number of applications is summarized according to applied various drugs.•The new approaches to enhance transdermal drug delivery is introduced.•The latest trend and an outlook of future studies is reported.

Transdermal drug delivery (TDD) has several significant advantages compared to oral drug delivery, including elimination of pain and sustained drug release. However, the use of TDD is limited by low skin permeability due to the stratum corneum (SC), the outermost layer of the skin. Sonophoresis is a technique that temporarily increases skin permeability such that various medications can be delivered noninvasively. For the past several decades, various studies of sonophoresis in TDD have been performed focusing on parameter optimization, delivery mechanism, transport pathway, or delivery of several drug categories including hydrophilic and high molecular weight compounds. Based on these various studies, several possible mechanisms of sonophoresis have been suggested. For example, cavitation is believed to be the predominant mechanism responsible for drug delivery in sonophoresis. This review presents details of various studies on sonophoresis including the latest trends, delivery of various therapeutic drugs, sonophoresis pathways and mechanisms, and outlook of future studies.