Probing the skin permeation of fish oil/EPA and ketoprofen-3. Effects on epidermal COX-2 and LOX.

This work employed immunocytochemistry (ICC) techniques to study the effect of topically applied fish oil and ketoprofen on cyclooxygenase (COX-2) and lipoxygenase (LOX) within freshly excised porcine ear skin. Maintained in Hanks buffer immediately post excision, full thickness membranes were mounted in Franz diffusion cells and dosed with 1 ml of individual formulations containing ketoprofen, fish oil or both. At different timepoints, the diffused areas were recovered and relative activities of COX-2 and LOX determined. It was found that the fish oil formulation qualitatively inhibited the expression of both COX-2 and LOX enzymes. As expected, ketoprofen had no effect upon LOX expression but a significant decrease on COX-2 expression was observed. The formulation containing both fish oil and ketoprofen proved to be the most effective at inhibiting the expression of both COX-2 and LOX. Considered together with data from earlier papers, a mechanism of EPA permeation enhancement by ketoprofen may be elucidated and also show the ability of such a formulation to inhibit these enzymes and thus indicate the efficacy of such a formulation.