Promising prospects of lipid-based topical nanocarriers for the treatment of psoriasis

Abstract

Psoriasis is a serious condition of the skin which is marked by inflammation and hyper-proliferation of keratinocytes. Because of the complex nature of the disease, it has a tremendous negative impact on the patient's overall quality of life like another chronic disease. Currently, various medications are available to treat psoriasis, but none of the medications is perfect in itself in the treatment of psoriasis. Conventional topical drugs being first-line therapy has limited efficacy due to poor drug penetration, deposition, and dose-related toxicity. Recent advancement in lipid-based colloidal topical nanocarriers promises much better therapeutic efficacy and safety of encapsulated drugs. Topical lipid-based colloidal nanocarriers offer better skin permeation, controlled drug release, offers high drug payload, and excellent colloidal stability of the encapsulated drug. Lipid nanocarriers are mainly prepared from biocompatible and biodegradable lipids to ensure their safety. Through this review, we attempted to present an overview of the pathogenesis of psoriasis, current treatment medications, their limitations, and skin delivery of drugs from such nanocarriers. In addition, combinational drug targeting using lipid-based nanocarrier as a newer technique to psoriatic treatment is also discussed. Further, we attempted to give a brief detail of various lipid-based colloidal topical nanocarriers encapsulating one or more drugs to ensure better skin permeation and reduction of dose-related toxicity for managing psoriasis.