The objective of the present work was to formulate ethosomal loaded with metronidazole and convert them to gel formulation. Ethosomes entrapping metronidazole were prepared using cold method and the effect of varying concentration of ethanol was considered for obtaining an optimized formulation. Lecithin (2%w/w) was used as the phospholipid to provide the structure to the vesicles and propylene glycol (10%) was used as the permeating agent. The vesicles were found to be of spherical to irregular shape ranged from 1.4 µm to 1.8 µm in size. The drug entrapment in the ethosomes was studied by analyzing the unentrapped drug using UV spectrophotometry at 340 nm and it was found that the maximum entrapment efficiency was found to be 92.07% for formulation ME3 and minimum 58.68% for formulation ME5, respectively. The in vitro permeation study suggested that the maximum permeation in the egg membrane occurred in ME3 (0.38 mg/cm2) with 30% ethanol concentration while ME5 exhibited the minimum permeation (0.28 mg/cm2). ME3 was incorporated into gel base to obtain gel formulations and the results revealed a good protection of the ethosomal gel when 2% carbopol was used as the gelling base.
NAMES:
ONLINE ISSN:2456-8244
Keywords: Metronidazole, ethosome, topical gel, entrapment, film hydration
DOI:
https://www.drugbank.ca/drugs/DB00936 assessed on 27/01/2026.
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