Clinical cosmeceutical repurposing of melatonin in androgenic alopecia using nanostructured lipid carriers prepared with antioxidant oils

ABSTRACT

Background: The present work aims to formulate nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs) exhibiting high skin deposition and high inherent antioxidant potential to repurpose the use of melatonin hormone and some antioxidant oils in the treatment of androgenic alopecia (AGA).

Research design and methods: NLCs were characterized for their size, charge, drug entrapment, anti-oxidant potential, physical stability, in vitro release, surface morphology, and ex-vivo skin deposition. Their merits were clinically tested on patients suffering from AGA by calculating the degree of improvement, conduction of hair pull test, histometric assessment, and dermoscopic evaluation.

Results: Results revealed that melatonin NLCs showed nanometer size, negatively charged surface, high entrapment efficiency, and high anti-oxidant potential, in addition to sustained release for 6 h. Furthermore, NLCs displayed good storage stability and they were able to increase the skin deposition of melatonin 4.5-folds in stratum corneum, 7-folds in epidermis, and 6.8-folds in the dermis compared to melatonin solution. Melatonin NLCs displayed more clinically desirable results compared to the melatonin solution in AGA patients, manifested by increased hair density and thickness and decreased hair loss.

Conclusions: The aforementioned system was shown to be a very promising treatment modality for AGA, which is worthy of futuristic experimentation.

KEYWORDS:

• Nanostructured lipid carriers
• melatonin
• androgenic alopecia
• cosmeceuticals
• skin

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Seatons company for their kind supply of the antioxidant oils, and Gattefosse’ company for their kind supply of Labrafac Lipophile, Compritol and Precirol.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer Disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose

Author contributions

All authors contributed equally to the work and they all contributed in the writing of the manuscript.

Supplementary material

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Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.