Advanced formulations for improving therapies with anti-inflammatory or anaesthetic drugs: A review

The development of new more effective therapeutic treatments for pain relief is essential for enhancing the patient quality of life and safety and avoiding or limiting risks of abuse, addiction or serious injuries posed by some of the present pain therapies. With this aim, in the last years, several advanced delivery systems have been developed to increase bioavailability, therapeutic efficacy and safety of well known analgesics, overcoming limits and drawbacks of traditional formulations. Among the different kinds of drugs used in the treatment of pain, non-opioid drugs such as local anaesthetics, corticosteroids and non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are preferred in the treatment of mild or moderate pain. However, each of these classes is associated with different adverse events and inconveniences, most of which could be reduced or overcome by appropriate drug carrier systems. This review is focused on recent drug delivery strategies based on micro- and nano-technologies developed for improving the effectiveness in pain management through non-opioid agents, exploiting different approaches such as: cyclodextrin complexation, solid dispersions with hydrophilic polymers, mechano-chemically activated systems, micro and nanoparticles, micro and nano-emulsions, vesicular systems. Combined approaches, simul-taneously exploiting the relative advantages of such systems in a single drug delivery device, were also reviewed