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Abstract

Drugs for ocular administration are administered topically and their absorption is limited by different barriers known as ocular barriers. These barriers are located in different areas of the eye and the barrier encountered by a particular drug will depend on the route of administration of the drug to the eye, or the segment of the eye the drug is eliciting its action. Some of these barriers include tear film, the blood-ocular barrier which consists of blood-aqueous barrier and blood-retinal barrier and tight junctions present in the cornea that prevents passage of some drug molecules. This chapter will discuss the physiological barriers to ocular drug delivery which limit the distribution of the drug within the eye and also reduce its bioavailability.

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Correspondence to Henry Nettey .

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG

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Nettey, H., Darko, Y., Bamiro, O.A., Addo, R.T. (2016). Ocular Barriers. In: Addo, R. (eds) Ocular Drug Delivery: Advances, Challenges and Applications. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47691-9_3

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