Magnetophoresis: an approach to enhance transdermal drug diffusion.

Magnetophoresis is a novel approach in enhancing drug delivery across biological barriers. Benzoic acid, a diamagnetic substance, was selected as the drug candidate. The drug diffusion across rat abdominal skin was enhanced due to the influence of the magnetic field. The experiment with alternating on-off-fields in the same diffusion set-up confirmed that the difference in flux between passive and magnetic diffusion is not due to any variation in the experimental condition or membrane properties. The influence of magnetic field strength on diffusion flux was determined and was found to increase with increasing applied field strength.