Curcumin (CUR) is one of the most commonly used herbal product; it shows effective antiinflammatory
and anti-oxidant effects. However, poor aqueous solubility and low permeability
are the major challenges in therapeutic application of curcumin. One class of vesicular
nanocarriers called “Niosome and ethosome” which have proved to possess distinct advantages
were used to encapsulate curcumin and evaluated for their morphology, particle size, zeta
potential, entrapment efficiency (EE%) and drug release. They were incorporated into hydroxy
propyl methyl cellulose (HPMC15000) gel then, evaluated on the rat skin via inhibition of
carrageenan induced rat paw edema. The results showed that the particle size of curcumin
loaded niosomes and ethosomes were ranged (317.5±1.91 to 558.3±8.587 nm) and (182.1±5.3 to
354.5±30.03 nm), respectively. Skin permeation studies demonstrated that CUR permeability
coefficient through rat kin for gel formulations of loaded vesicles was ~ four times higher as
compared to free CUR. The in-vivo anti-inflammatory studies proved that gel formulations of
CUR vesicles possessed higher significant inhibition of carrageenan induced rat paw edema
when compared to pure curcumin. Accordingly, the results revealed that, curcumin loaded
nanovesicels held great potential approaches as anti-inflammatory in topical application.