Hitendra S. Mahajan

  The purpose of this research was to introduce and evaluate natural excipients (soy polysaccharides, CP) that have versatile property in the orally disintegrating tablets. The main objective of this work was to assess the excipient for its activity as a disintegrant and compare its properties with other synthetic superdisintegrants. Orodispersible tablets containing a model drug, Lornoxicam was prepared using different ratios of banana powder, soy polysaccharides, crosspovidone, croscarmellose sodium (CCS) and sodium starch glycollate (SSG) as disintegrants. The prepared tablets were evaluated for their physiochemical properties like wetting time, water absorption ratio, dispersion time, disintegration time and drug release studies. It was observed that the results obtained from formulations containing the soy polysaccharides and CP as superdisintegrant showed a better profile in comparison to banana powder, CCS and SSG. Disintegration time of the formulations varied from 15 to 36s for all the formulations. Dissolution studies suggested that the drug dissolution from formulations containing soy polysaccharides was more than 90% within 15min in comparison to 82% and 85% for CCS and SSG respectively. Stability studies of the prepared tablets showed non-significant drug loss and drug release. Hence, it was concluded that banana powder can be used as a natural disintegrant in orodispersible tablets. The excipient being available naturally and having nutritional benefits adds value to the formulation and can be utilized as an effective excipient in preparing tablets with less cost.

As a site for drug delivery the oral cavity offers advantages over the conventional gastrointestinal route and the parenteral and other alternative routes of drug administration. It provides direct entry into the systemic circulation thereby avoiding the hepatic first pass effect. Verapamil HCl belongs to a drug group of calcium channel antagonists. The oral absorption of the drug from these forms is 90% but its bioavailability approaches only 10–20%, due to a extensive first-pass effect. Here attempt is made to extract mucilage and use as gelling and mucoadhesive agent. The yield of natural mucoadhesive fenugreek extract was 28-29 percent. Fenugreek mucilage shows synergistic effect with xanthan gum and provide higher viscosity. Fenugreek is used with xanthan gum in the selected ratio of 2.5:1. Different parameters were evaluated like % yield of fenugreek, viscosity, gel strength, mucoadhesive study, in-vitro diffusion study, ex-vivo permeation study and differential scanning calorimetry. The mucosal permeation of drug from the formulation was evaluated using Franz diffusion cell, goat buccal mucosa as semi-permeable membrane. The amount of the drug released was determined by evaluating drug diffused through the membrane by using UV- spectrophotometry. The verapamil HCl release was sustained up to 6 hrs by optimizing concentration of fenugreek and xanthan gum.