Development and In-Vitro Evaluation of Medicated Lollipop Containing Mebendazole for Paediatrics

In the present investigation an attempt has been made to prepare and evaluate medicated lollipop of mebendazole. One of the major health problems faced by hundreds of millions of school-age children is infection by helminths, more commonly known as worms. Mebendazole is used as a broad-spectrum anthelmintic. The conventional dosage forms like tablets, capsules, syrups etc are inconvenient for paediatric patients because of difficult to swallow tablets and capsules or unpleasant taste of drug. As a result, the demand for developing new technologies has been increasing day by day. Lollipops or lozenges are flavored medicated dosage forms intended to be sucked and held in the mouth or pharynx containing one or more medicaments usually in the sweetened base. Medicated lollipop is designed to improve patient compliance, acceptability and increase oral retention time. The lollipops were prepared by heating and congealing method using methylcellulose as polymer. Drug-excipient compatibility study was carried out using FT-IR. All the formulations were subjected to various physicochemical evaluations like weight variation, hardness, drug content, friability etc. The in-vitro dissolution study of F0 was found to be 96.14% at 15min whereas F1 was found to be 99.33% at 25min. Stability study was carried out as per ICH-Guidelines (Q1A) at 30oC and 65% RH. From the present study it can be concluded that addition of hydrophilic polymers yield good result to prolong oral retention time of lollipop. Medicated lollipop can provide an attractive alternative formulation in the treatment of paediatric patients.