Formulation and Characterization of Tramadol Emulgel

Topical drug delivery system (TDDS) facilitates the passage of therapeutic quantities of drug substance through the skin and into the general circulation for their systemic effects. Although having plenty of advantages over other routes of administration topical drug delivery system is having certain limitations including hydrophilic drugs cannot easily penetrate across skin, to overcome this problem drug made into sufficient lipophilic or lipophilic drugs are sued along with certain penetration enhancers which help to achieve desired results. Tramadol is a narcotic analgesic proposed for moderate to severe pain. It may be habituating. Tramadol and its metabolites are excreted primarily in the urine with observed plasma half-lives of 6.3 and 7.4 hours for tramadol and M1, respectively. Approximately 30% of the dose is excreted in the urine as unchanged drug, whereas 60% of the dose is excreted as metabolites. On this contest, emulgel was formulated using carbopol 934 and HPMC K15M, liquid paraffin as oil phase, emulsifying agents like tween 20 and span 20 and propylene glycol as permeation enhancers. On basis of quality of emulgel produces total eight formulations F1 to F8 were selected. They were evaluated for physical appearance, pH, rheological study, drug content and in-vitro drug permeation study, FTIR and globule size determination. The skin irritation test was performed on rabbit’s skin using best formulation F7. Thus, the formulated emulgel had a distinct advantage over existing conventional dosage form in that the drug permeation was found to be rapid across the skin and hence the increased therapeutic response by bypassing 1st pass metabolism and with no gastro intestinal bleeding and also patient compliance.