DOI: 10.21276/sajp.2018.7.6.9

Pages: 266-273

Effective Delivery of bioactive molecules across the human skin has always been a challenge for formulation scientists because of the presence of the most impervious layer of skin, i.e. Stratum corneum. Various approaches have been used to circumvent that layer of skin; one of the easiest and non-invasive methods of them is the use of vesicular systems. Since a long time, various kinds of lipid vesicles have been used for efficient delivery of drugs. Conventional liposomes have been used for delivery of the drug across skin for a long time, but they lack the ability to penetrate the intercellular channels of skin and are unstable. Therefore, to overcome these kinds of difficulties associated with lipid-based vesicles, ethanol-based vesicles were formulated by scientists and they have been used in the effective delivery of the drug across skin since then. Ethosomes are colloidal non-invasive vesicular carriers with a very high ethanolic content, with the high ethanolic content they enable the drugs to reach deep into the skin layers into the systemic circulation. In the current review, an attempt has been made to understand the nature better, preparation, evaluation parameters along with applications, problems and future prospects of these novel ethanol containing vesicles.