Intra-articular delivery of flurbiprofen sustained release thermogel: improved therapeutic outcome of collagenase II-induced rat knee osteoarthritis.

Intra-articular delivery of flurbiprofen sustained release thermogel: improved therapeutic outcome of collagenase II-induced rat knee osteoarthritis. Drug Deliv. 2020 Dec;27(1):1034-1043 Authors: Li P, Li H, Shu X, Wu M, Liu J, Hao T, Cui H, Zheng L Abstract Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is a common degenerative disease. Intra-articular administration of flurbiprofen is frequently employed in clinic to treat OA, while repeated injections are required because of the limited effective duration. To improve therapeutic outcome and prolong the treatment interval, a poly(ε-caprolactone-co-lactide)-b-poly(ethylene glycol)-b-poly(ε-caprolactone-co-lactide) (PCLA-PEG-PCLA) triblock copolymer based flurbiprofen thermosensitive gel for the sustained intra-articular drug delivery was designed in this study. The anti-OA effects of this flurbiprofen thermogel were investigated on collagenase II-induced rat knee OA model by multiple approaches and compared with that of conventional sodium hyaluronate and flurbiprofen injecta. In vitro drug release studies indicated that flurbiprofen was sustained released from the thermosensitive gel for more than three weeks. This sustained drug release system exerted comparable short-term analgesic effects and distinctly improved long-term analgesic efficacy in terms of the increased percentage of the total ipsilateral paw print intensity and the reduced Knee-Bend scores of OA rats. The inflammatory response was att...
Source: Drug Delivery - Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Tags: Drug Deliv Source Type: research