An artifi cial polymer membrane consisting of polyethyleneglycol and methyl methacrylate units was prepared as a better alternative to predict the skin permeability of drugs in our previous report. The aim of this study was to determine whether the membrane is useful to evaluate skin permeability of drugs to transdermal products. Three tape formulations, three cataplasms, two cream formulations and two gel formulations containing ketoprofen (KP) were used as the model products and KP fl ux from

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... each product across the membrane (J M ) was compared with the fl ux across human skin (J S ). In the formulations except for the gel formulations, J M strongly correlated with J S, although J M were slightly higher than J S . The effects of ethanol, as a typical pharmaceutical excipient in gel formulations, on swelling of the membrane and the KP permeability were examined to account for the discrepancy in the gel formulations. The increase in ethanol content led to the increases in the membrane swelling and the following enhanced KP permeability. Although further modifi cation might be required for tolerability to pharmaceutical excipients such as alcohols formulation testing using well-modifi ed artifi cial membranes will be useful to assess the quality and the bioequivalence of transdermal products in the future.