Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 21, 2026

Self-Nanoemulsification of Healthy Oils to Enhance the Solubility of Lipophilic Drugs
Published on: July 27, 2022
Enhanced topical delivery and ex vivo anti-inflammatory activity from a betamethasone dipropionate formulation
Mohd Hanif Zulfakar1, Nassima Abdelouahab, Charles M Heard
1Cardiff University, UK.
Objective And Design:
To probe ex vivo the influence of fish oil (FO) on the topical delivery and anti-inflammatory properties of betamethasone dipropionate (BD).
Materials Or Subjects:
Freshly excised porcine ear skin.
Treatment:
Ointment formulations containing BD + salicylic acid (SA), BD + SA + FO, or base as control, applied to the skin mounted in Franz cells.
Methods:
Comparative depth profiling; skin probed by immunohistochemistry for cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and by ELISA for prostaglandin E2 (PGE2).
Results:
More BD was obtained in the first 30 layers and the remaining epidermis with BD + SA. However, more penetrants were recovered from the remaining skin treated with BD + SA + FO. Although BD + SA reduced COX-2 expression within the epidermis, greater reduction was observed with BD + SA + FO as indicated by reduced COX-2 expression. FO alone had a comparable effect on the expression of COX-2. Modulation of PGE2 production also supported the anti-inflammatory properties of fish oil, reducing PGE2 levels by an amount comparable to the reduction by BD. Combining FO and BD, however, did not provide the anticipated potentiation effect.
Conclusions:
Fish oil enhanced the delivery of BD and SA across skin. Addition of fish oil also enhanced the anti-inflammatory activity of BD, attributed to increased amounts of BD present in the skin and/or the intrinsic anti-inflammatory activity of fish oil.
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