Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2023 Mar 27;22(5):387–409. doi: 10.1038/s41573-023-00670-0

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© Springer Nature Limited 2023, Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.

PMC Copyright notice

Fig. 2 — a, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved examples of drug delivery systems (DDSs) grouped by route of administration (oral, intramuscular, transdermal, subcutaneous, intraocular, intranasal, intrauterine and transmucosal (pulmonary, sublingual, buccal, intravaginal and rectal)). b, Pharmacokinetic profiles showing the plasma concentration of a drug following a single dose, based on the type of release. Traditional, non-DDS formulations of parenteral and oral drugs result in rapid clearance of drug from the blood, whereas some DDSs can prolong the duration over which the drug concentration remains within the therapeutic window without increasing the peak drug concentration. In the case of pulsatile release, DDSs can also allow for multiple, pre-programmed release events mimicking bolus doses of drug following a single administration.