Curcumin-Based Ionic Liquid Hydrogel for Topical Transdermal Delivery of Curcumin To Improve Its Therapeutic Effect on the Psoriasis Mouse Model

Psoriasis is a systemic, recurrent, chronic autoimmune skin disease. However, psoriasis drugs have poor skin permeability and high toxicity, resulting in low bioavailability and affecting their clinical application. In this study, we propose a curcumin-based ionic liquid hydrogel loaded with ilomastat (Cur-Car-IL@Ilo hydrogel), which can effectively maintain the sustained release of drugs and improve the skin permeability of drugs. We used a model of imiquimod-induced psoriasis and demonstrated that local application of Cur-Car-IL@Ilo hydrogel can improve skin lesions in mice with significantly reduced expression levels of inflammatory factors, matrix metalloproteinase 8, and collagen-I. The expressions of iron death-related proteins SLC7A11 and ASL4 were significantly decreased after treatment with Cur-Car-IL@Ilo hydrogel. Flora analysis showed that the content of anaerotruncus, proteus, and UCG-009 bacteria in the gut of psoriatic mice increased. The levels of paludicola, parabacteroides, prevotellaceae_UCG-001, escherichia-shigella, and aerococcus decreased, and the levels of some of the above bacteria tended to be normal after treatment. Therefore, the curcumin-based ionic liquid hydrogel can be used as a multifunctional, nonirritating, noninvasive, and highly effective percutaneous treatment of psoriasis.