An In- Vitro Iontophoretic Permeation Study of Nicotine through Rat Skin

Nicotine transdennal systems are being used as an aid to smoking cessation programs.as the kinetics of nicotine delivery is important in success of a smoking cessation program,rapid and high input of nicotine is required, which is not possible by passive methods andrequires enhancement strate gies such as iontophoresis. iontophoretic permeation, of nicotinelooks promising, based on published data on human skin . however, to optimize this method,permeation pathways should be known and further parameters have to studied, which are thesubject of the present investigation. in this study iontophoretic permeation of nicotine throughrat skin was performed and the effects of different variables on this phenomenon were studied.anodic iontophoresis of nicotine from a solution at ph 2.8, using a 0.5 mncm2 current densityresulted in a considerable enhancement (about 3-fold) of nicotine absorption throu gh rat skin .nicotine concentration and current density showed a directly increasing effect on permeationof the drug, but the effect of conc entration was not linear. pulsatile current delivery was moreeffective in permeation of nicotine than the continuous method. anodic iontophoresis wasaround 2-fold more effective than the cathodic method in increasing the flux . post iontophoreticpermeation studies showed good reversibility of the membrane barrier properties. results werein good agreement with the reported human data and might be considered as an evidence ofthe ability of rat skin to model human skin and also the importance of intercellul ar pathwayof the stratum corneum in iontophoretic delivery of nicotine and possibly other drug s. donor'sph showed no effect on permeation of nicotine under the studied conditions, ph values of <3.results also showed that the electr-osmotic flow could occur at ph values lower than 4. finally,this study show that by controlling the effecti ve parameters of iontophoretic del ivery, a moreeffecti ve nicotine transdennal del ivery method would achievable.