Follicular Delivery of Spironolactone via Nanostructured Lipid Carriers for Management of Alopecia

The study from 2014 explored the use of nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs) to deliver spironolactone (SL), an FDA-approved antiandrogenic drug, for the treatment of alopecia. The researchers created SL-loaded NLCs with an entrapment efficiency of 74.90% to 91.20% and a particle size ranging from 215.6 nm to 834.3 nm. The NLCs demonstrated good stability and a uniform size distribution. The optimized NLC formulation released 66% of the drug over 24 hours, which was significantly higher than the 40% released from the drug suspension. The study concluded that the optimized NLCs are a promising method for targeted delivery of SL to hair follicles, potentially enhancing therapeutic efficacy and reducing side effects compared to oral administration. The study involved 8 experimental runs with different SL-NLC formulations.