Occurrence of skin
fungal infections is increasing nowadays and their presence is more prominent in patients suffering from immunocompromised diseases like
AIDS. Skin
fungal infections are a major cause of visits by patients to dermatology clinics. Although, a large number of
antifungal agents are available for treatment of skin
fungal infections, but, their toxic profile and physicochemical characteristics reduce therapeutic outcome. When these
antifungal agents are delivered topically using conventional formulations like creams and
gels, they may cause various side effects like redness, burning, and swelling at the site of application. Therefore, various vesicular formulations (
phospholipid based or non
phospholipid based) have been explored by pharmaceutical scientists to treat skin
fungal infections topically. Vesicular formulation explored for the purpose are
liposomes, ethosomes, transfersomes, transethosomes,
niosomes, spanlastics,
oleic acid vesicles, and nanoparticles. These formulations show various advantages like bioavailability enhancement of bioactives, high skin permeation power, no side effects at application site, dosing frequency reduction, and sustained drug release. Therefore, in the present article, we have discussed about the utility of various vesicular nanocarrier systems to treat skin
fungal infections.