الفهرس 
A pharmaceutical study on certain nanocarrier systems for enhancing the transdermal drug delivery
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Abstract
Major depressive disorder is the most common mood disorder. Depression is a common chronic disease characterized by a persistent severe depressed mood for most of time for a two-week period or more. It causes disability and interferes with the ability to eat, sleep, study and work and is considered as one of the prominent causes of disability worldwide.Despite the increased available therapeutic treatments for depression, especially serotonin nor-adrenaline reuptake inhibitors and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, half the number of depressed patients remains untreated. Besides, the long-term drug administration may lead to serious side effects, even with newer medications, and this may lead to discontinuation of treatment during the first weeks. Although selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are the first line treatment and relatively well tolerated in comparison to tricyclic imipramine type antidepressants, their administration may affect gastrointestinal tract, sexual ability and sleep rhythms. So, there is a need for better tolerated, safer, faster acting and more effective depression treatment in higher number of patients. Agomelatine (AGM) is a novel antidepressant drug. AGM acts through a synergistic mechanism of action, being agonist on the melatonergic receptors and antagonist to the serotonergic 5-HT2c receptors. It is taken once daily at a dose of 25 mg up to 50 mg. It is characterized by its high tolerability and safety, which could be also assigned to its new synergistic mechanism of action. AGM suffers from some limitations; including, (i) short elimination half -life (1-2 h), as well as (ii) the extensive first-pass metabolism (mediated by CYP1A2, CYP2C9 isozymes) resulting in low absolute bioavailability (<5%)