Abstract

FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF PHYTOCONSTITUENTS CREAM FOR THE TREATMENT OF VARICOSE VEINS

Santosh V. Gandhi*, Nikita M. Nilgar and Mangesh R. Bhalekar

Abstract

Phytoconstituents rutin and quercetin are used to assist the treatment of venous disorder like varicose veins and hemorroids, which reduces the capillary permeability and boost the integrity of vessels. There are certain limitations to the use of these phytoconstituents in the pharmaceutical formulations because of their physical properties like limited aqueous solubility, poor bioavailability and high oral dose. Therefore in the present research work cream of rutin and quercetin were developed for improving solubility and bioavailability using topical route.A mixture of rutin and quercetin was formulated in o/w cream. The cream was optimized to achieve good spreadability and highest drug diffusion using a two factor glyceryl caprylate (GC) and triethanolamine (TEA) three level (spreadability, viscosity and drug diffusion) factorial design. The cream was then characterized for physicochemical parameters. In-vitro diffusion and ex-vivo permeation studies were performed to estimate the diffusion of the drugs from the prepared formulation.It was observed from ex-vivo permeation studies that the flux for optimized cream was found to be 0.1898 and 0.3481mg/hr/cm2respectively as compared to the saturated solution of pure rutin (0.1035mg/hr/cm2) and quercetin (0.1264mg/hr/cm2).The formulation was optimized and had viscosity 8190Cps, spreadability 56.4g and in-vitro drug diffusion flux as 0.2053 mg/hr/cm2 for rutin and 0.1621mg/hr/cm2 for quercetin respectively. Thus, it can be concluded that the components are contributing to providethe phytoconstituents at the site of action by topical cream optimized for the spreadability, viscosity and drug diffusion which control the release and entry of actives through skin barrier.

Keywords: Rutin, Quercetin, Venous disease, Topical cream, ex-vivo permeation.