Human skin permeability enhancement by lauric acid under equilibrium aqueous conditions

An in vitro method was developed to investigate the enhancement of hydrocortisone transport across human stratum corneum (SC) by a model enhancer, lauric acid, in aqueous solutions under equilibrium conditions with respect to the enhancer. In contrast to classical (i.e., nonequilibrium) loading techniques, in which the enhancer is applied only to the donor side of SC either in pure form or in an organic solvent while enhancer-free aqueous buffers are placed in the receptor phase, this method allowed the investigation of pH effects, concentration effects, and reversibility of both enhancer uptake and enhancement of drug transport under thermodynamically well-defined conditions. The SC-buffer partition coefficients for lauric acid were linear with concentration and sigmoidal with pH, suggesting that both the neutral species and laurate anion partition into SC. Comparisons of partition coefficients in delipidized and untreated SC as a function of pH indicated that the uptake of lauric acid in neutral form is governed primarily by the lipid domain, whereas the protein domain accounts for anion uptake. The effects of lauric acid on skin permeability were > 80% reversible upon extraction of the enhancer from the membrane. However, the degree of enhancement of hydrocortisone permeability was nonlinearly dependent on the equilibrium concentration of lauric acid in either the aqueous buffer or the membrane, exhibiting thresholds in the appearance of enhancement with concentration. The enhancer concentration necessary to achieve isoenhancement of about 6-fold varied from approximately 1 x 10(-5) M at pH < pKa to approximately 1 x 10(-2) M at high pH (pH > 8) demonstrating the higher influence of the free acid species.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)