An evaluation of crude palm oil (CPO) and tocotrienol rich fraction (TRF) of palm oil as percutaneous permeation enhancers using full-thickness human skin

The drawbacks associated with chemical skin permeation enhancers such as skin irritation and toxicity necessitated the research to focus on potential permeation enhancers with a perceived lower toxicity. Crude palm oil (CPO) is obtained by direct compression of the mesocarp of the fruit of the oil palm belonging to the genus Elaeis. In this research, CPO and tocotrienol-rich fraction (TRF) of palm oil were evaluated for the first time as skin permeation enhancers using full-thickness human skin. The in vitro permeation experiments were conducted using excised human skin mounted in static upright ‘Franz-type’ diffusion cells. The drugs selected to evaluate the enhancing effects of these palm oil derivatives were 5-fluorouracil, lidocaine and ibuprofen: compounds covering a wide range of Log p values. It was demonstrated that CPO and TRF were capable of enhancing the percutaneous permeation of drugs across full-thickness human skin in vitro. Both TRF and CPO were shown to significantly enhance the permeation of ibuprofen with flux values of 30.6 µg/cm2 h and 23.0 µg/cm2 h respectively, compared to the control with a flux of 16.2 µg/cm2 h. The outcome of this research opens further scope for investigation on the transdermal penetration enhancement activity of pure compounds derived from palm oil

Degradation of unpretreated and thermally pretreated polypropylene by soil consortia

Unpretreated (PP-UT) and thermally pretreated (at 80 οC for 10 days) polypropylene (PP-TT) films of 0.05 mm thickness were subjected to in vitro biodegradation in minimal medium with mixed soil culture for 12 months. In this period 10.7 and 0.4% weight loss was observed with PP-TT and PP-UT, respectively. The tensile strength decreased by 51.8 and 28.3%, the crystallinity increased by 28 and 33% and isotacticity increased by 3 and 9%, respectively, over the same time period. The ester carbonyl index in PP-TT increased up to 9 months and later decreased indicating abiotic followed by biotic process. No such changes were observed with PP-UT. Methyl group index decreased in both the cases indicating oxidation at the primary carbon. Increase in surface energy indicated that the polymer became hydrophilic. Surface changes were observed by SEM and AFM. A single culture was isolated at the end of 12 months and it was identified as Bacillus flexus. The morphology of the organism was rods in a chain and it was present in the form of an endospore

Biodegradation of polyethylene and polypropylene

9-22Polyethylene and polypropylene are the two polyolefins with wide ranging applications. They are recalcitrant and hence remain inert to degradation and deterioration leading to their accumulation in the environment, and, therefore creating serious environmental problems. In this review, biodegradation of these two polymers under in vitro conditions is reported. An attempt has been made to cover the mechanism of biodegradation, the various bacterial and fungal organisms that have been reported for the same, methods adopted for the studies and different characterization techniques followed to measure the extent of degradatio