摘要：

Vesicular drug delivery systems, such as, liposomes and ethosomes are used for increasing the skin penetration of drugs and many cosmetic chemicals. Several methods have been tried to increase the permeation rate of drugs temporarily. One simple and convenient approach is application of drugs in formulation with elastic vesicles or skin enhancers. Ethosomes are noninvasive delivery carriers that enable drugs to reach the deep skin layers and/or the systemic circulation through phospholipid-based elastic nanovesicles, composed of hydroalcoholic or hydro/glycolic phospholipids in which the concentration of alcohols is relatively high. The high concentration of ethanol brings increase in fluidity of lipids hence increase in permeability of the skin and improves the drug penetration. It can interact with the polar head group region of the lipid molecules, resulting in the reduction of the melting point of the stratum corneum lipid, thereby increasing lipid fluidity and cell membrane permeability. The high flexibility of vesicular membranes from the added ethanol permits the elastic vesicles to squeeze themselves through the pores, which are much smaller than their diameters. Ethosomal systems are much more efficient in delivering substances to the skin in the terms of quantity and depth, than either conventional liposomes or hydroalcoholic solutions. The scope of this small review is to introduce the novel concept of ethosomes and to describe some approaches, mechanisms and applications of stimulating ethosomal drug delivery system.Keywords: Ethosomes, liposomes, novel drug delivery, vesicles, phospholipids

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