Assessment of the efficacy of drug transdermal delivery by electro-phonophoresis in treating tuberculous lymphadenitis

Figures & data

Figure 1. Transdermal delivery with EP. (A) Ultrasonic conductometric instrument used in this study. Each ultrasonic conductometric instrument has two pairs of probes that can be used for two patients at the same time. (B) Two patches immersed with RIF solution. (C) and (D) Patients with intumescent or ruptured lymph nodes were given RIF-transdermal patches through EP.

Table 1. Experiment design.

Groups	Administration route	Drugs	Sampling time point	Sample number
I	Oral	NA	Pumping pus normally	42
II	Transdermal only	INH	1.5 h patch	13
III	Transdermal plus EP	INH	0.5 h EP + 1 h patch	20
IV	Transdermal only	RIF	1.5 h patch	17
V	Transdermal plus EP	RIF	0.5 h EP + 1 h patch	35

Figure 2. The calibration curves for the analysis of INH (A) and RIF (B).

Figure 3. Local drug concentrations in patients receiving transdermal patches with or without EP after dose administration. INH (A) and RIF (B) concentrations were measured in pyogenic fluids from subjects receiving transdermal patches with EP (INH, n=20; RIF, n=30) and subjects receiving transdermal patches-only (INH, n=13; RIF, n=17). Basically the systemic treatment group was taken as the control group. Horizontal lines represent the median for each group. The statistical significance was determined by the Mann–Whitney U-test. *p < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001, significantly different from the oral group or the transdermal only group.