Importance

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Abstract

An electro-osmotic transdermal drug delivery system for passing a drug to the systemic blood of a patient through the skin. The delivery system includes a semi-dry drug patch containing a water solute with the drug and a selected level of current delivered to the semi-dry patch. Water from the semi-dry patch is limited in movement from the patch to the skin particularly in lateral movement relative to the skin so that the sweat and sebaceous ducts and glands, which ordinarily are filled with liquid, namely the solute, and act as electrical shunts for osmotic delivery of the drug, are starved of liquid so that the electrical current is diverted to the stratum corneum along with the electro-osmotic movement of the liquid carrying the drug. This result greatly increases the total drug delivery area of the skin. In addition, because the current need not be kept at a low level to avoid irritation or damage to the skin shunts, the current of the invention can be significantly elevated so as to overcome the higher resistivity of the stratum corneum to the passage of liquid and current. A current conditioner such as an oscillator can be added to the system so as to break the liquid column of the skin shunts at periodic time intervals in accordance with natural replenishment and blow out of the skin shunts that will occur at relatively long time periods.

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First Claim