USE OF FACTORIAL DESIGN IN SONOPHORETIC TRANSDERMAL DELIVERY OF PROPRANOLOL HCl

Utilization of a large number of animals in pharmaceutical research and universal concern for animal rights has obliged the scientific community to search for alternative approaches in experimental design. Factorial design is an important statistical tool to study the effect of several experimental factors by carrying out limited number of animal studies. Sonophoresis is the movement of drug molecules under the influence of ultrasound energy for systemic delivery of drugs across the skin. In the present study, the influences of various sonophoretic parameters were investigated invitro using factorial design approach. This approach was used so that the relative importance of various ultrasound factors and any interaction between them could be determined with minimal use of animals. In this study, a 2 3 full factorial design plan was used. The three factors taken were intensity (X1), duration of ultrasound application (X2) and mode of ultrasound application (X3), which were varied at two levels, i.e. low level (-) and high level (+). Statistical analysis was performed using MINITAB 14 software (Minitab Inc., PA, USA) with general optimization techniques.