Prediction of Dermal Permeability Coefficient of Nevirapine—Effect of Cosolvents, Anionic, Nonionic and Cationic Surfactants

Transdermal drug delivery not only has contributed immensely to medical practice, but has enjoyed enormous interest in the field of cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. Nevirapine, a non‐nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) is used clinically for the treatment of HIV‐ 1 infection. The aim of the present study is to investigate the influence of cosolvents (glycerol, propylene glycol, ethanol, polyethylene glycol 400) and surfactants (polysorbate 20, polysorbate 80, sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium cholate and cetrimide) on the dermal permeability coefficient of nevirapine by utilizing established and recognized mathematical model that employs partition coefficient as one of its molecular descriptors. The partition coefficient of nevirapine is determined in chloroform-water system at room temperature using the shake flask method. The results show that all the cosolvents used in this study decrease the partition coefficient of nevirapine. The same decrease in the partition coefficient of nevirapine is observed with all the surfactants investigated. The order of dermal enhancement potential of the vehicles studied based on the predicted permeability coefficient is glycerol > propylene glycol > ethanol > polyethylene glycol 400 for the cosolvents while tween 20 > tween 80 > sodium lauryl sulfate > sodium cholate > cetrimide for the surfactants. The maximum predicted flux through skin was obtained by multiplying the predicted permeability coefficient and the drug aqueous solubility. As the rate of penetration into the skin is quantitatively assessed by the use of permeability coefficient, the findings suggest that for dermal formulation of nevirapine, glycerol and tween 20 are the most preferred vehicles out of the vehicles investigated. Furthermore, the results of the correlation coefficients obtained by plotting permeability coefficient or maximum predicted flux, versus logarithm partition coefficient indicate that permeability coefficient can be a more reliable parameter to predict transdermal absorption of nevirapine than flux.