in vitro release kinetics of curcumin from thermosensetive gelatin-chitosan hydrogels containing zinc oxide nanoparticles

In this paper, chemically-crosslinked gelatin/chitosan hydrogels containing zinc oxide nanoparticles (znps) were loaded with curcumin (cur) and their microstructural features, physical properties, the drug entrapment efficiency, and curcumin release kinetics were evaluated using scanning electron microscopy (sem), the liquid displacement method, and uv–vis spectroscopy. the in vitro kinetics of drug release was also studied using the first-order, korsmeyer-peppas, hixon-crowell, and higuchi kinetic models. the sem micrographs confirmed the formation of highly porous structures possessing well-defined, interconnected pore geometries. a significant reduction in the average pore size of the drug-loaded hydrogels was observed with the addition of znps and cur to the bare hydrogels. a high value of drug loading efficiency (~ 72 %) and a maximum curcumin release of about 50 % were obtained for the drug-loaded specimens. it was found that curcumin was transported via the non-fickian diffusion mechanism. the kinetics of drug release was best described by the hixon-crowell, higuchi, and korsmeyer-peppas models, demonstrating that curcumin release was controlled by the diffusion of drug molecules and the degradation and swelling of the drug carrier. however, a lower degree of fitting was observed with the firstorder kinetic model.