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Abstract
<p class="first" id="d1241457e99">The acute or chronic drug treatments for different
neurodegenerative and psychiatric
disorders are challenging from several aspects. The low bioavailability and limited
brain exposure of oral drugs, the rapid metabolism, elimination, the unwanted side
effects and also the high dose to be added mean both inconvenience for the patients
and high costs for the patients, their family and the society. The reason of low brain
penetration of the compounds is that they have to overcome the blood-brain barrier
which protects the brain against xenobiotics. Intranasal drug administration is one
of the promising options to bypass blood-brain barrier, to reduce the systemic adverse
effects of the drugs and to lower the doses to be administered. Furthermore, the drugs
administered using nasal route have usually higher bioavailability, less side effects
and result in higher brain exposure at similar dosage than the oral drugs. In this
review the focus is on giving an overview on the anatomical and cellular structure
of nasal cavity and absorption surface. It presents some possibilities to enhance
the drug penetration through the nasal barrier and summarizes some in vitro, ex vivo
and in vivo technologies to test the drug delivery across the nasal epithelium into
the brain. Finally, the authors give a critical evaluation of the nasal route of administration
showing its main advantages and limitations of this delivery route for CNS drug targeting.
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