Study of the Fosfosal Controlled Permeation through Glutaraldehyde Crosslinked Chitosan Membranes

Fosfosal, a phosphate derivative of salicylic acid, which presents both analgesic and antiinflammatory properties, was used as a model drug to study the potential of recently developed chitosan membranes (with different crosslinking degrees) to be used as drug release rate-controlling membranes. The fosfosal permeation across these membranes was studied using an in-house built developed diffusion cell with online automatic monitoring. Experiments were performed using phosphate buffer saline (PBS) solution at 37°C. Different flow properties of the detection set up were determined in order to estimate the errors introduced by the automatic online monitoring system. For increasing crosslinking degrees the permeability initially decreased, and then increased, likely as a consequence of the crosslinking influence on a variety of properties like crystallinity and hydrophilicity that have opposite influence on permeability. In summary, it was possible to control the drug release profile by means of changing the degree of crosslinking of chitosan membranes and to follow the respective release kinetics by means of using the developed diffusion cell.