Curcumin: Its Bioavailability and Nanoparticle Formulation: A Review

Curcumin is used as traditional Indian and Chinese medicine in order to treat various diseases as well as used as a wound healing agent. Two to five percent in turmeric is curcumin; turmeric is available in yellow colour mainly obtained from polyphenolic pigment and fat-soluble substance called as curcuminoids, mostly used in the Indian subcontinent. Various clinical trials are conducted for understanding the wide range of therapeutic uses of curcumin. According to the studies, it shows that curcumin manifests very poor oral bioavailability, and forms numerous curcumin metabolites are formed after metabolism, although the bioavailability is low but the therapeutic activity of the curcumin for the various diseases, and for treatment of the disease enhancement of bioavailability of the curcumin in the future is necessary. According to the recent study on nanocurcumin with the size less than 100 nm which is an application of polymer-based nanoparticle of curcumin. It was observed that this polymer-based nanoparticle of curcumin has similar in vitro activity as that of free curcumin in pancreatic cell lines. In in-vivo study performed with the healthy volunteers a cream containing curcuminoid loaded SLNs was topically applied over the cream containing free curcuminoid showed the improvement in efficacy. Therefore, various techniques are developing for the nanoparticulate formulations. Key words: Curcuminoids, bioavailability, nanoparticulate, nanocurcumin, polyphenolic.