NMR diffusion-ordered spectroscopy can explain differences in skin penetration enhancement between microemulsion formulations.

Changing the formulation variables of microemulsion systems has a significant influence on the resulting transdermal enhancement effect. NMR diffusion-ordered spectroscopy (DOSY) can offer an extremely valuable tool to interpret the differences in the obtained fluxes based on variations in self-diffusions between the drug and its locus domain. From the clinical editor: Microemulsion systems are often used as vehicles for transdermal drug delivery. In this communication authors interpret quantitative differences between microemulsion formulations based on studying the self-diffusion of testosterone relative to the diffusion of its residing oil phase based on DOSY spectroscopy.