Drug Release Characteristics and Skin Irritancies of Topical Gels and Multiple Emulsion Creams Containing Kojic Acid

외용겔 및 다중유제크림의 코지산 방출특성과 피부자극성

Kojic acid (KA) is an antimelanogenic agent which has been widely used in cosmetics to whiten the skin color. However, it has the drawbacks of the skin irritancy and the instability against the pH, temperature, and light. In order to overcome these problems, various topical gels and multiple emulsion creams which can control the release of active ingredient, KA, were formulated employing cream bases of mineral oil with caprylic capric triglyceride and hydrophilic polymers such as chitosan, carbopol. and pluronics. Using Franz diffusion cells mounted with a synthetic cellulose membrane (MWCO 12,000), drug release characteristics of the formulations were evaluated by the HPLC assay of KA concentration in the receptor compartment of pH 7.4 phosphate buffered saline solution. Drug release from chitosan-based gels (ChitoGel) obeyed to the first order kinetics with a rapid release especially in the initial period. However, pluronic-based gels (PluGel) and carbopol-based gels (CarboGel) revealed controlled release of drug to some extent, followed by the square root-time kinetics. Moreover, the release of KA was further controlled with the W/O/W multiple emulsion creams (MultiCream), showing the apparent zero order release kinetics by virtue of dynamic ratecontrolling membrane of the oil layer. The flux $(J,\;{\mu}g/cm^2/hr)$ of ChitoGel. CarboGel. PluGel. and MultiCream in the initial period of 6hr were 73.30, 28.67. 24.04 and 7.72, respectively. On the other hand, the skin irritancy score of ChitoGel and MultiCream were observed as 2.5 and 2.3 respectively, in the rabbit skin irritation test. Although there were insignificant differences at p<0.05 between those formulations, it was possible to conclude that the W/O/W multiple emulsion creams containing KA might be a good candidate for an antimelanogenic drug delivery system due to the controlled release of acidic drug molecules.