Background/Aim. Vinegars are of the main international traditional
nutraceuticals which have been used as vaginal health protectant due to
vagina pH balance maintenance and antimicrobial properties. Since the main
used form of vinegar was liquid, it was difficult for vaginal application
with low residence time; in this study a vaginal mucoadhesive gel of vinegar
was designed. Methods. Xanthan gum (XG) and tragacanth (TG) were utilized as
natural gel forming polymers. The effects of Xanthan gum and tragacanth on
mucoadhesion strength and drug release of the gel formulations were
optimized using a 3 level (32) factorial design. Several physico-chemical
properties of the gel formulations including gel viscosity, spreadability,
scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of hydrogel chains, and release
kinetic were also investigated. Results. demonstrated that tragacanth
possesses a statistically significant effect on release rate control
(p-value=0.0027) while both tragacanth and xanthan gum have significant
effect (p value= 0.0001 and 0.0017, respectively) on mucoadhesion property.
Conclusion. Design of experiment suggested that formulation F7 with 5%
xanthan gum and 1% tragacanth (mucoadhesion = 0.4632 N and release rate =
88.8% in 6 hours) can be considered as the optimum formulation with some
modifications.