Purpose: To develop an ibuprofen ointment with a potential for both topical and systemic delivery of the drug.

Method: A co-solvency technique with a trial and error approach was used to develop a 10% ibioprofen ointment in petrolatum base, with the entire drug dissolved in the base. An insertion cell was used to evaluate drug release from the formulations. Further, factorial design multiple regression (FDMRA) analysis, a statistical optimization technique, was used in the optimization of the final formulation.

Result: The desired ibuprofen ointments were developed. Release depended on vehicle and proportion of co-solvents. Best fit equations for optimization purposes including various fluxes (initial, steady-state and total) and diffusion coefficient as dependent variables and the concentrations of co-solvents as independent variables were obtained using SAS programme. Dependent variables strongly depended (p<0.05) on the independent variables and followed the polynomial equations generated.

Conclusion: The ointments consisting of petrolatum base (80%), PEG 400 (6%) and propylene glycol (4%) and ibuprofen (10%) and that consisting of petrolatum base (75%), PEG 400 (6%), propylene glycol (4%), menthol (5%) and ibuprofen (10%) can be used for topical and systemic delivery of the active, ingredient  respectively.

 Key words: ibuprofen, co-solvent, ointment, membrane permeability, optimization, SAS programme

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*Corresponding Author: Phone: 0091-870-2574978 e-mail: aukunurujithan@hotmail.com